903 


1  5 


ON 
POETIC  INTERPRETATION 


OF    NATURE 


BY 

J.  C.  SHAIRP,   LL.  D. 

PRINCIPAL  OF  THB   UNITED  COLLEGE  OF  ST.   SALVATOR  AND  ST.  LEONARD, 
ST.   ANDREWS 


BOSTON  AND   NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 
&&,  Cambridge 

1900 


PEEFAOE. 


THIS  small  book  is  the  result  of  some  lectures 
which  I  had  occasion  to  give  to  a  large  popular 
audience  more  than  a  year  ago.  I  have  since 
re-written  and  re-cast  them  into  their  present 
shape.  Yet  the  book  still  bears  the  impress  of 
the  peculiar  object  with  which  the  lectures  were 
composed,  and  of  the  circumstances  under  which 
they  were  delivered.  That  object  was  to  add  a 
kind  of  literary  supplement  to  several  longer  and 
more  systematic  courses  of  lectures  on  physical 
subjects,  such  as  Chemistry,  Geology,  and  Phys- 
iology, which  were  delivered  at  the  same  time 
by  Professors  who  are  my  colleagues  in  this  Col- 
Aege.  It  seemed  to  me  that  some  good  might 
be  done,  if  I  could  succeed  in  bringing  before  our 
hearers  the  truth  that,  while  the  several  physi- 
cal sciences  explain  each  some  portion  of  Nat- 
ure's mysteries,  or  Nature  considered  under  one 
special  aspect,  yet  that  after  all  the  physical  sci- 
ences have  said  their  say,  and  given  their  expla- 

92012 


Vi  PREFACE. 

nations,  there  remains  more  behind  —  another 
aspect  of  Nature  —  a  further  truth  regarding  it, 
with  which,  real  and  interesting  though  it  is,  Sci- 
ence does  not  intermeddle.  The  truth  on  which 
especially  I  wished  to  fix  attention  is  the  relation 
which  exists  between  Nature  and  the  sensitive 
and  imaginative  soul  of  man,  and  the  result_or 
creation  which  arises  from  the  meeting  of  these 
two.  That  is  a  true  and  genuine  result,  which 
it  does  not  fall  within  the  province  of  Science  to 
investigate,  but  which  it  is  one  peculiar  function 
of  Poetry  to  seize,  and,  as  far  as  may  be,  to  in- 
terpret. That  the  beauty  which  looks  from  the 
whole  face  of  Nature,  and  is  interwoven  with 
every  fibre  of  it,  is  not  the  less,  because  it  re- 
quires a  living  soul  for  its  existence,  as  real  a 
truth  as  the  gravitation  of  the  earth's  particles  or 
the  composition  of  its  materials,  —  that  careful 
noting  and  familiar  knowledge  of  this  beauty  re- 
veals a  new  aspect  of  the  world,  which  will  amply 
repay  the  observer,  —  and  that  the  Poets  are,  in 
a  special  way,  kindlers  of  sensibility,  teachers 
who  make  us  observe  more  carefully,  and  feel 
more  keenly  the  wonders  that  are  around  us : 
fchese  are  some  of  the  truths  which  I  wished  to 
bring  before  my  hearers,  and  which,  if  I  could  in 
any  measure  succeed  in  doing  so,  would,  I  feli 
sure,  not  be  without  mental  benefit. 


PREFACE.  vil. 

As  the  audience  whom  I  addressed  consisted 
mainly  of  young  persons  whose  chief  employ- 
ments lay  elsewhere  than  in  libraries,  I  felt  that 
I  had  no  right  to  reckon  on  any  wide  acquaint- 
ance with  English  literature.  This  will  account 
for  the  occurrence  in  the  later  chapters  of  many 
well-known  passages  of  English  Poetry,  which  to 
persons  at  all  conversant  with  letters  may  seem 
too  familiar  even  for  quotation.  If,  however,  the 
passages  quoted  served  to  illustrate  the  views  I 
wished  to  impress,  I  was  not  desirous  to  travel 
beyond  well-worn  paths. 

In  treating  of  a  subject  which  has  in  recent 
years  engaged  the  thoughts  of  many  distinguished 
men,  it  could  not  but  be  that  I  should  often  come 
across  and  use  the  thoughts  of  others.  No  doubt 
it  is  not  easy  always  to  discriminate  between 
thoughts  that  have  risen  spontaneously  to  one's 
own  mind,  and  those  which  have  been  suggested 
by  other  writers.  Whenever  I  have  been  aware 
that  I  was  using  thoughts  not  my  own,  I  have 
tried  to  make  due  acknowledgment  of  this  in  the 
text.  At  the  same  time  I  would  wish  to  acknowl- 
edge here  more  expressly  how  much  I  am  con- 
scious of  obligation  to  three  living  writers,  —  to 
Canon  Mozley  of  Oxford,  for  suggestions  received 
from  his  sermon  on  "  Nature,"  and  incorporated 


•viii  PREFACE. 

in  my  chapter  on  "  the  mystical  side  of  Nature ; " 
to  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke  for  suggestive  generaliza- 
tions contained  in  his  "  Theology  in  the  English 
Poets ; "  and  to  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  for  some 
true  and  new  thoughts  in  his  recent  Essay  on 
Wordsworth's  Ethics ;  some  thoughts  derived 
from  the  two  latter  writers  I  have  tried  to  inter- 
weave into  the  last  chapter  of  my  book. 

As  to  the  book  itself,  I  am  well  aware  how 
small  a  portion  of  how  vast  a  subject  it  has  even 
attempted  to  deal  with.  But,  as  the  original  lect- 
ures were  written,  so  this  book  is  meant,  mainly 
for  the  young.  If,  however,  it  should  induce  any 
of  these  to  look  on  the  outward  world  with  more 
heedful  and  thoughtful  eyes,  and  to  win  thence 
for  themselves  finer  observations,  and  deeper  de- 
light, it  will  have  served  a  good  end* 

ST    SALVATOB'S  COLLEGE,  ST.  ANDREWS, 
June  12,  1877. 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  JL 

TBS  SOURCES  OF  POETRY 11 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE  POETIC  FEELING  AWAKENED  BY  THE  WORLD  OF 
NATURE  • 32 

CHAPTER  HI. 
POETIC  AND  SCIENTIFIC  WONDER 46 

CHAPTER  IV. 
WILL  SCIENCE  PUT  OUT  POBTBY! 57 

CHAPTER  V. 
How  FAR  SCIENCE  MAY  MODIFY  POETRY        .       .       .64 

CHAPTER  VI  \  r 

w 

THE  MYSTICAL  SIBB  OF  NATURE 77 

CHAPTER  VIL 

PRIMEVAL  IMAGINATION  WORKING  ON  NATURE  —  LAN- 
GUAGE AND  MYTHOLOGY 87 


CHAPTER 
SOME  OF  THE  WAYS  IN  WHICH  POETS  DEAL  WITH  NATURE  109 


X  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  IX. 

PA91 

NATURE  IN  HEBREW  POETRY,  AND  IN  HOMER.        .        .  136 

CHAPTER  X. 
NATURE  IN  LUCRETIUS  AND  VIRGIL          ....  153 

CHAPTER  XL 
NATURE  IN  CHAUCER,  SHAKESPEARE,  AND  MILTON  .        .170 

CHAPTER  XII. 

RETURN  TO  NATURE    BEGUN   BY   ALLAN  RAMSAY   AND 
THOMSON 193 

CHAPTER  XIIL 

NATURE  IN  COLLINS,  GRAY,  GOLDSMITH,  COWPER,  AND 
BURNS 205 

CHAPTER  XIV. 
WORDSWORTH  AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE  385 


THE 

POETIC  INTERPRETATION  OF  NATURE. 


CHAPTER  I. 
THE   SOURCES   OP  POETRY. 

POETRY,  we  are  often  told,  has  two  great  ob- 
jects with  which  it  deals,  two  substances  out  of 
which  alone  it  weaves  its  many-colored  fabric  — 
Man  and  Nature.  Yet  such  a  statement  seems 
hardly  adequate.  For  is  there  not  in  all  high  Po- 
etry, whether  it  deals  with  Nature  or  with  Man, 
continual  ^reference,  now  latent,  now  expressed, 
to  something  whicli  is  beyond  and  abovs^both  ? 
This  reference  has  taken  many  shapes,  and  ut- 
tered itself  in  many  ways,  according  to  the  belief 
and  civilization  of  each  age  and  country.  But 
by  whatever  mists  and  obstructions  it  has  been 
colored  and  refracted,  it  has  never  been  wholly 
absent  from  true  Poetry,  and  has  been  working 
itself  clearer,  and  making  itself  more  powerfully 
felt,  as  the  world  grows  older.  The  Higher  Life 
encompassing  the  life  both  of  Man  and  of  Nature ; 
the  deeper  Foundation  on  which  both  ultimately 


12  THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRY. 

repose  ;  the  omnipresent  Power  which  binds  both 
together,  and  makes  them  work  in  unison  toward 
some  further  end,  —  this  has  been  a  truth  ever 
present  in  ,the  highest  Poetry,  to  which  great 
,  Poets  have  always  witnessed.  Therefore,  even  in 
the  most  summary  view  of  the  domain  of  Poetry, 
we  must  not  omit  this  invisible  but  most  power- 
ful element.  To  express  it  clearly,  we  must  say 
that  Poetry  has  three  objects,  which  in  varying 
degrees  enter  into  it,  —  Man,  Nature,  and  God. 
The  presence  of  this  last  pervades  all  great  Po- 
etry, whether  it  lifts  an  eye  of  reverence  directly 
towards  Himself,  or  whether  the  presence  be  only 
indirectly  felt,  as  the  centre  to  which  all  deep 
thoughts  about  Man  and  Nature  ultimately  tend. 
Regarded  in  this  view,  the  field  over  which  Po- 
etry ranges  becomes  coextensive  with  the  domain 
of  Philosophy,  and  indeed  of  Theology.  Dissim- 
ilar, often  opposed,  as  is  the  procedure  of  Poetry, 
of  Philosophy,  and  of  Theology,  different  as  are 
the  faculties  which  each  calls  into  play,  and  the 
mode  in  which  these  faculties  deal  with  their  ob- 
jects, yet  the  hinges  on  which  all  alike  turn,  the 
cardinal  conceptions  on  which  their  eye  is  fixed, 
are  fundamentally  the  same.  While  Philosophy 
and  Theology,  in  their  striving  to  attain  distinct 
forced  to  deal  with  these  great 


ideas  separately,  and  to  keep  them  systematically 
apart,  Poetry,  on  the  other  hand,  under  the  fusing 
ttnd  blending  power  of  imagination,  is,  in  its  high- 
est mood,  pervaded  by  a  contimiaL-mference  to 


THE  SOURCES  0"F  POETRY.  13 

alLthe  three  at  once,  and  will  at  times  combine 
and  flash  them  all  at  once  upon  the  soul  in  one 
inspired  line. 

It  is,  however,  of  only  one  of  these  three  main 
objects  of  Poetry  that  I  now  propose  to  treat  — 
the  action  of  Poetry  on  external  Nature,  the  way 
in  which  the  poets  deal  with  the  outward  world. 
In  doing  this  it  will  appear  at  a  glance,  and  will 
become  more  clear  in  the  sequel,  that  it  is  impos- 
sible to  isolate  this  oneasgefit^of^oetry ;  that, 
even  when  the  poet's  regards  are  mainly  turned 
toward  the  outward  world,  the  sense  of  God  and 
of  man  is  not  far  away.  But  even  when  we  do 
our  best  to  limit  the  subject  as  far  as  may  be,  it 
is  so  vast  in  itself  and  in  its  ramifications,  that, 
far  from  hoping  to  exhaust  it  in  these  few  pages, 
I  shall  be  well  content  if,  when  they  are  finished, 
it  is  found  that  a  few  avenues  of  thought  have 
been  opened  up,  a  few  glimpses  obtained  into 
truths  which  are  real  and  suggestive. 

Before  going  farther,  let  me  say  what  I  mean 
by  Nature,  for  there  is  no  word  which  more 
needs  definition.  There  is  none,  except  perhaps 
its  counterpart,  Reason,  which  is  used  in  more 
various,  often  conflicting,  meanings,  or  with  more 
shades  of  meaning,  each  passing  into  the  other. 
By  Nature,  tl\enr  I  understand  the  whole  sum 
of  appearances  whi(>|i  rp.g.nli  n^  which  ar&  made 

known  to  usn  primarily  t.Tiro^g^  foftjKgiSftfl.  It 
includes  all  the  intimations  we  have  through 
sense  of  that  great  entity  which  lies  outside  of 


14  THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRY. 

ourselves,  but  with  which  we  have  so  much  to  do. 
For  my  present  purpose  I  do  not  include  Man, 
.    either  his  body  or  his  mind,  as  part  of  Nature, 
\  but  regard  him  rather  as  standing  out  from  Nat- 
ure, and  surveying  and  using  that  great  external 
entity  which  encompasses  and  confronts  him  at 
every  turn,  he  being  the  contemplator,  Nature 
the  thing  contemplated. 

The  same  external  Nature  which  Poetry  works 
on  supplies  the  staple  or  raw  material  with  which 
all  the  Physical  Sciences  deal,  and  which  they 
endeavor  to  reduce  to  exact  knowledge,  subduing 
apparent  confusion  and  multiplicity  into  unity, 
law,  and  order.  Each  of  the  Physical  Sciences 
attempts  to  explain  the  outward  world  in  one  of 
its  aspects,  to  interpret  it  from  one  point  of  view. 
And  the  whole  circle  of  the  Physical  Sciences, 
or  Physical  Science  in  its  widest  extent,  confines 
itself  to  explaining  the  appearances  of  the  ma- 
terial world  by  the  properties  of  matter,  and  to 
reducing  ^what  is  complex  and  manifold  to  the 
operation  of  a  few  simple  but  all-pervading  laws. 
But  besides  those  aspects  of  Nature  which  Phys- 
ical Science  explains,  over  and  above  those  laws 
which  the  Sciences  discover,  there  are  other  sides 
or  aspects  of  Nature  which  come  to  us  through 
other  than  scientific  avenues,  and  which,  when 
they  do  reach  us,  bring  home  to  us  new  truth, 
and  raise  us  to  noble  contemplations.  This  or 
dered  array  of  material  appearances,  these  mar- 
ihaled  lines  of  'Nature's  sequences,  wonderful 


THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRY.  15 

and  beautiful  though  they  be,  are  not  in  them- 
selves all.  No  reasonable  being  can  rest  in  them. 
Inevitably  he  is  carried  out  of  and  beyond  these, 
to  other  inquiries  which  no  Physics  can  answer : 
How  stand  these  phenomena  to  the  thinking 
mind  and  feeling  heart  which  contemplates  them  ? 
how  came  they  to  be  as  they  are  ?  a^re  they  there 
of  themselves,  or  is  there  a  Higher  Centre  from 
which  they  proceed  ?  what  is  their  origin  ?  what 
the  goal  toward  which  they  travel?  Inquiries 
such  as  these,  which  are  the  genuine  product  of 
Reason,  lead  us  for  their  answer,  not  to  the  Phys- 
ics of  the  Universe,  but  to  another  order  of 
thought,  to  Poetry^to  Philosophy,  and  to  Theol- 
ogy. And  the  light  thrown  from  these  regions 
on  this  marvelous  outward  framework,  while  it 
contradicts  nothing  in  the  body  of  truth  which 
Science  has  made  good,  permeates  the  whole  with 
a  higher  meaning,  and  transfigures  it  with  -a 
splendor  "which  is  Divine. 

Philosophy  and  Theology  we  must  for  the 
present  leave  alone,  and'  ask  only  what  is  that 
aspect  of-.  Nature,  that  truth  of  the  External 
World,  with  which  Poetry  has  more  immediately 
to  do.  To  put  it  in  the  simplest  way:  it  is 
Beauty,  that  strange  and  wonderful  entity  with 
which  all  creation  is  clothed  as  with  a  garment, 
or  rather  I  should  say  pervaded  and  penetrated  . 
as  by  a  subtle  essence,  inwrought  into  its  inmost 
fibre.  The  Poet  is  the  man  to  whom  is  given 
the  eye  that  sees  this  more  instinctively,  the 


16  THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRY. 

heart  that  feels  it  more  intensely,  than  other  men 
do;  and  who  has  the  power  to  express  it  and 
bring  it  home  to  his  fellow-men.  But  if  I  were 
to  confine  myself  to  this  I  should  not  be  saying 
much.  For  the  question  would  at  once  be  asked, 
"Pray,  what  is  Beauty?"  And  it  might  be 
further  asked,  "  Is  it  not  as  much  the  business  of 
the  Painter  as  of  the  Poet  to  seize  and  express 
the  visible  beauty  of  which  you  speak  ?  " 

Any  attempt  to  answer  the  first  question,  and 
to  explain  what  is  Beauty,  would  involve  a  long 
discussion,  perhaps  not  a  very  profitable  one.  At 
any  rate  it  would  lead  me  far  from  my  present 
purpose.  This  only  may  be  said  in  passing. 
Light,  as  physicists  inform  us,  is  not  something 
which  exists  in  itself  apart  from  any  sentient 
being.  The  external  reality  is  not  light,  but  the 
motion  of  certain  particles,  which,  when  they  im- 
pinge on  the  eye,  and  have  been  conveyed  along 
the  visual  nerve  to  the  brain,  are  felt  by  the 
mind  as  light,  —  result  in  the  perception  of  light. 
Light,  therefore,  is  not  a  purely  objective  thing, 
but  is  something  produced  by  the  meeting  of 
certain  outward  motions  with  a  perceiving  mind. 
Again,  certain  vibrations  of  the  air  striking  on 
the  drum  of  the  ear,  and  communicated  by  the 
nerve  of  hearing  to  the  brain,  result  in  the  per- 
ception of  sound.  Sound,  therefore,  is  not  a 
purely  objective  entity,  but  is  a  result  that  re- 
quires to  its  production  the  meeting  of  an  outr 
ward  vibration  with  a  hearing  mind;  it  is  the 


THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRY.  17 

result  of  the  joint  action  of  these  two  elements. 
In  a  similar  way,  certain  qualities  of  outward  ob- 
jects, certain  combinations  of  laws  in  the  mate- 
rial world,  when  apprehended  by  the' soul  through 
Us  aesthetic  and  imaginative  faculties,  result  in 
the  perception  of  what  we  call  Beauty.  There- 
fore Beauty,  neither  wholly  without  us  nor  wholly 
within  us,  is  a  proc?  act  resulting  from  the  meeting 
of  .certain  qualities  of  the  outward  world  with  a 
sensitive  and  imaginative  soul.  The  combination 
of  both  of  these  elements  is  requisite  to  its  ex- 
istence. -  It  is  no  merely  vmental  or  subjective 
thing,  bom  of  association,  and  depending  on  in- 
dividual caprice,  as  the  Scotch  philosophers  so 
long  fancied.  When  the  two  elements  necessary 
to  the  perception  of  it  have  met,  it  is  a  reality  as 
inevitable  and  as  veritable  as  the  law  of  gravita- 
tion, or  any  law  which  science  registers.  And 
when,  either  through  our  own  perception,  or 
through  the  teaching  of  the  poets,  we  learn  to 
apprehend  it  —  when  it  has  found  entrance  into 
us,  through  eye  and  ear,  imagination  and  emotion, 
we  have  learnt  something  more  about  the  world 
in  which  we  dwell  than  Physics  have  taught  us, 
—  a  new  truth  of  the  material  universe  has 
reached  us  through  the  imagination,  not  through 
the  scientific  or  logical  faculty. 

If,  then,  Beauty  be  a  real  quality  interwoven 
into  the  essential  texture  of  Creation,  and  if 
Poetry  be  the  fittest  human  expression  of  the 
existence  of.  this  quality,  it  follows  that  Poetry 


18  THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRY. 


hasto  do  with_teuth  as  really  as 
^ough^jmth^jdjfiereni^  This  ia 

perhaps  not  the  common  view  of  the  matter.  An 
old  Scotch  gentleman  I  once  knew,  one  of  the 
most  sagacious  and  wise  of  his  generation,  who, 
whenever  anything  was  propounded  which  waa 
more  than  usually  extravagant  and  absurd,  used 
to  dismiss  it  with  a  wave  of  his  hand,  saying: 
"  Oh,  that  is  Poetry."  Yet  he  was  one  who  could 
see  in  the.  outlines  of  his  native  hills,  and  feel  in 
all  human  relations,  whatever  was  most  beautiful. 
There  are,  I  dare  say,  a  good  many  sensible  people 
who  share  my  friend's  view,  to  whom  Poetry  is 
only  another  name  for  what  is  fanciful,  fantastic, 
unreal  —  only,  as  one  called  it,  a  convenient  way 
of  talking  nonsense.  To  these  I  would  say,  If 
this  be  so,  if  Poetry  be  not  true,  if  it  have  not  a 
real  foundation  in  the  nature  of  things,  if  genuine 
Poetry  be  not  as  true  a  form  of  thinking  as  any 
other,  indeed  one  of  the  highest  forms  of  human 
thought,  then  I  should  not  recommend  any  one  to 
waste  time  on  it,  but  to  haVe  done  with  it,  and 
turn  to  more  solid  pursuits.  It  is  because  I  have 
a  quite  opposite  conviction,  because  I  believe 
Poetry  to  have  a  true  and  noble  place  in  this 
order  of  things,  a  place  not  made  by  the  conceit 
of  man,  but  intended  by  the  Maker  of  this  order, 
because  I  hold  Poetry  to  be,  .what  Wordsworth 
has  called  it,  "  the  breath  and  fines  spirit  of  all 
knowledge"  —  to  be  "immortal  as  the  lieart  of 
,"  it  is  because  of  thjese  convictions  that  there 


THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRY.  19 

is  claimed  for  it  the  serious  regard  of  reasonable 
men,  and  that  it  seems  worth  our  while  to  dwell 
for  a  little  on  one,  though  only  one,  aspect  of  this 
many-sided  study. 

The  real  nature  and  intrinsic  truth  of  Poetry 
will  be  made  more  apparent,  if  we  may  turn  aside 
for  a  moment  to  reflect  on  the  essence  of  that 
state  of  mind  which  we  call  the  poetic,  the  genesis 
of  that  creation  which  we  call  Poetry.  Whenever 
any  object  of  sense,  or  spectacle  of  the  outer 
world,  any  truth  of  reason,  or  event  of  past  his- 
tory, any  fact  of  human  experience,  any  moral 
or  spiritual  reality ;  whenever,  in  short,  any  fact 
or  object  which  the  sense,  or  the  intellect,  'or  tl 
soul,  or  "the  spirit  of  man  can  apprehend,  comes 
home jto  one  so  as  to  touch  him  to'  the  quick,  to 
pierce  him  with  a  more  than  usual  vividness  and 
sense  of  reality,^  then  Is  awakened  that  stirring 
of  the  imagination,  that  glow  of  emotion,  in  which 
Poetry  is  born.  ^  There  is  no  truth  cognizable  by 
man  which  may  not  shape  itself  into  Poetry.  It 
matters  jiot  whether  it  be  a  vision  of  Nature's 
ongoings,  or  a  conception  of  ~theninderstanding,  or 
some  human  incident,  or  some  truth  of  the  affec- 
tions, or  some  moral  sentiment,  or  some  glimpse 
into  the  spiritual  world ;  any  one  of  these  may  be 
so  realized  as  to  become  fit  subjects  for  poetic 
utterance.  Only  in  order  that  it  should  be  so,  it 
is  necessary  that  the  object,  whatever  it  is,  should 
cease  to  be  a  merely  sensible  object,  or  a  mere 
notion  of  the  understanding,  and  pass  inward,  — 


20  THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRY. 

pass  out  of  the  coldness  of  the  merely  notional 
region  into  the  warm  atmosphere  of  the  life-giving 
Tmagination.  Vfo.ij7.pfl  thfiTP)  ^  j-.mf.Vi  nfrppp.H 
itself  into  living  images  which  kindle  the  passion 
and  affections,  and  stimulate  the  whole  man. 
This  is  what  has  been  called  the  real  apprehen- 
sion of  truths,  as  opposed  to  the  merely  notional 
assent  to  them.  There  is  no  quality  in  which 
men  more  differ  than  in  this  intensity  of  mental 
nature,  this,  power  of  vividly  realizing  whatever 
a  man  does  lay  hold  of.  It  is  an  essential  —  in- 
deed a  primary — ingredient  in  the  composition 
of  the  Poet ;  but  is  not  confined  to  him.  It  is 
shared  by  all  men  who  are  powerful  in  any  line 
of  thought  or  action.  This  mental  energy,  this 
intensity  of  realizing  power,  is  the  stuff  out  of 
which  are  made  all  who  in  any  way  really  move 
their  fellow-men. ,  It  creates,  as  has  been  well 
said,  "  Heroes  and  saints,  great  leaders,  statesmen, 
preachers,  and  reformers,  the  pioneers  of  discov- 
ery in  science,  visionaries,  fanatics,  knight-errants, 
and  adventurers."  In  thesfe  and  such  like,  the 
men  of  abounding  energy,  who  have  revolution- 
ized states  and  moved  the  world,  the  process  had 
begun  with  the  vivid  realization  of  some  truth 
through  the  imagination;  but  it  has  not  stopped 
there.  It  has  gone  on  from  the  imagination  to 
the  affections.  It  has  stirred  the  hopes,  the  fears, 
the  loves,  the  hates  of  the  soul,  enkindling  them 
and  driving  them  with  full  force  on  the  will,  and 
propelling  the  man  into  action.  In  the  Poet,  ow 


THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRY.  21 

the  other  hand,  the  process  not  only  begins,  but 
continues  in  the  imagination,  kindling,  no  doubt, 
a  real  glow  of  emotion,  but  not  leading  him,  as 
poet,  to  any  outward  ^action,  save  the  one  action 
of  giving  vent  to  what  he  feels,  of  finding  poetic 
expression  for  the  vision  with  which  his  imagina- 
tion is  filled. 

In  this  we  see  the  distinction  between  the 
Poet  and  those  other  men  of  intense  soul,  who 
share  with  him  the  power  of  vivid  apprehension, 
of  making  jreal  through  the  imagination  whatever 
truths  they  see  at  all.  They  carry  that  truth 
which  they  have  imaginatively  apprehended  into 
the  region  of  the  passions  and  the  will,  and  rest 
not  till  they  have  condensed  it  into  outward 
action.  He  keeps  the  truths  which  he  seea^ 
within  the  confines  of  imagination,  and  is  im- 
pelled by  bis  peculiar  nature  to  seek  a  vehicle 
for  it,  not  in  action  but  in  song,  or  in  some  other 
form  of  artistic  expression.  And  hence  the  prac- 
tical danger  which  besets  the  Poet,  and  indeed  all 
aesthetic  and  literary  men,  of  becoming  unreal,  if 
that  truth  which  they  see  and  cultivate  for  ar- 
tistic purposes  they  never  try  to  embody  in  any 
form  of  practical  action,  any  common  purpose 
with  their  fellow-men. 

If  then  it  be  asked  what  are  the  proper  objects 
of  Poetry,  what  is  the  proper  field  for  the  exercise 
of  the  Poet's  art,  the  .answer,  supposing  what  I 
have  eaid,  to  be  true,  is,  the  whole  range  of  exist- 
ence; wherever  the  sensations,  thoughts,  feelings 


22  THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRY. 

of  man  can  travel,  there  the  Poet  may  be  at  his 
side,  and  find  material  for  his  faculties  to  work 
on.  The  one  condition  of  his  working  is,  that 
the  object  passjmtjnf  t.hft  r^on  of  mere  dry  fact, 
or  abstract  notion,  into  the  warm  anfl  forpafh  ing 
realnTof  imagination^  WEaFthemental  process 
is  by  which  objects  cease  to  be  mere  dead  facts, 
informations,  and  become  imaged  into  living  re- 
alities, I  stay  not  to  inquire.  The  whole  phi- 
losophy of  Imagination  is  a  subject  on  which  the 
metaphysicians  have  as  yet  said  little  that  is 
helpful. 

With  regard  to  the  working  of  Imagination 
and  other  so-called  faculties,  Philosophers,  I 
rather  think,  have  cut  and  carved  our  mental 
nature  with  too  keen  a  knife.  They  have  "  mur- 
dered to  dissect."  Our  books  lay  it  down,  for 
instance,  as  an  axiom,  that  a  definite  act  of  the 
pure  understanding  must  needs  precede  every 
movement  of  the  affections,  that  we  must  form 
a  distinct  conception  of  a  thing  as  pleasant  be- 
fore we  can  desire  it,  that  we  must  first  judge  a 
character  to  be  noble,  before  admiration  of  it  can 
be  awakened.  I  am  not  sure  that  this  is  the  true 
account  of  the  matter,  am  not  convinced  that  the 
understanding  unmixed  with  feeling,  the  pure 
intelligence  untouched  by  sentiment,  must  first 
decide  before  the  affections  can  be  moved.  Is  it 
BO  clear  that  in  all  cases  we  can  separate  knowl- 
edge from  affection  ?  Is  there  not  a  large  field 
of  truth  —  namely,  moral  truths,  in  which  we 


THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRY.  23 

cannot  do  so  —  into  which  the  affections  must 
actively  enter  before  any  judgment  can  be 
formed  ?  For,  as  has  been  said,1  "  The  affections 
themselves  are  a  kind  of  understanding ;  we  can- 
not understand  without  them.  Affection  is  a 
part  of  insight ;  it  is  required  to  understand  the 
facts  of  the  case.  The  moral  affections,  e.  g.,  are 
the  very  instruments  by  which  we  intellectually  • 
apprehend  good  and  high  human  character.  All 
admiration  is  affection  —  the  admiration  of  vir- 
tue, the  admiration  of  nature.  Affection  itself 
then  is  a  kind  of  intelligence,  and  we  cannot  sep- 
arate the  feeling  in  our  nature  from  the  reason. 
Feeling  is  necessary  for  comprehension,  and  we 
cannot  know  what  a  particular  instance  of  good- 
ness is,  we  cannot  embrace  the  true  conception  o^ 
goodness  in  general,  without  it." 

If  this  be  true  of  moral  apprehension,  if  in  this 
intelligence  and  affection  are  so  coincident,  so  in- 
terpenetrate each  other,  that  we  cannot  say  which 
is  first,  which  last,  where  the  one  ends,  the  other 
begins,  the  same  truth  holds  good  in  imaginative 
apprehension.  Here,  too,  there  is  not  first  a  cut- 
and-dry  intellectual  act,  and  then  a  succeeding 
emotion.  From  the  first,  in  every  act  of  the  im- 
agination, these  two  elements  are  present  simul- 
taneously ;  though  it  is  true  that  in  time  the 
emotional  element  tends  to  grow  stronger  than 
the  intellectual,  sometimes  even  overpowers  it. 
Imagination  in  its  essence  seems  to  be,  from  the 
1  Quarterly  Review,  October,  1870,  pp.  143, 144. 


24  THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRY. 

first,  intellect  and  feeling  blended  and  interpen- 
etrating each  other.  Thus  it  would  seem  that 
purely  intellectual  acts  belong  to  the  surface  and 
outside  of  our  nature,  —  as  you  pass  onward  to 
the  depths,  the  more  vital  places  of  the  soul,  the 
intellectual,  the  emotional,  and  the  moral  elements 
are  all  equally  at  work,  —  and  this  in  virtue  of 
their  greater  reality,  their  more  essential  truth, 
their  nearer  contact  with  the  centre  of  things. 
To  this  region  belong  all  acts  of  high  imagina- 
tion —  the  region  intermediate  between  pure  un- 
derstanding and  moral  affection,  partaking  of  both 
elements,  looking  equally  both  ways. 

But  it  is  not  with  the  philosophy  of  the  proc- 
ess, but  with  the  results  that  we  have  now  to 
do.  All  men  possess  this  power  of  vitalizing 
knowledge  in  some  measure.  The  mental  quali- 
ties which  go  to*  make  the  Poet  have  nothing 
exclusive  or  exceptional  in  them.  They  differ 
nothing  in  kind  from  those  of  other  men  —  only 
in  degree.  As  one  well  entitled  to  speak  for  the 
Poets  has  told  us,  —  the  Poet,  the  man  of  vivid 
soul  shares  the  same  interests,  sympathies,  feel- 
ings as  other  men,  only  he  has  them  more  in- 
tensely. "  Ijfc^is  distinguished  from  other  _juen» 
not  by  any  peculiar  gifts,  but  by  greater  prompt- 
ness and  intensity  in  thinking  and  feeling  those  - 
things  which  other  men  think  and  feel,  and  by  a 
greater  power  of  expressing  such  thoughts  and- 
feelings  as  are  produced  in  him." l 
*  Wordsworth,  Preface  to  Second  Edition  of  Lyrical  Ballad*. 


THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRY.  25 

I  have  said  that  the  range  of  Poetry  is  bound- 
less as  the  universe.  Whenever  the  soul  comes 
into  living  contact  with  iact  and  truth,  whenever 
it  realizes  these  with  more  than  common  vivid- 
ness, there  arises  a  thrill  of  joy,  a  glow  of  emo- 
tion^ And  the  expression  of  that  thrill;  that 
glow,  is  Poetry.  The  range  of  poetic  emotion 
majFmus  be  as  wide  as  the  range  of  human 
thought,  as  existence.  It  does  not  follow  from 
this  that  all  objects  are  alike  fit  to  awaken  po- 
etry. The  nobler  the  objects  the  nobler  will  be 
the  poetry  they  awaken,  when  they  fall  on  the 
heart  of  a  true  poet.  But  though  this  be  so, 
yet  poetry  may  be  found  springing  up  in  the 
most  unlikely  places,  among  what  seem  the  dr> 
est  efforts  of  human  thought,  just  as  you  may 
Bee  the  intense  blue  of  the  Alpine  forget-me-not l 
lighting  up  the  darkest  crevices,  or  the  most  bare 
and  inaccessible  ledges  of  the  mountain  precipice. 

In  illustration  of  this,  let  me  give  an  anecdote 
which  I  lately  read  in  one  of  Canon  Liddon's 
sermons  in  St.  Paul's :  —  "  Why  do.,jou  sit  up  so 
late  at  night  ?  "  was  a  question  put  to  an  eminent 
mathematician.  "  To  enjoy  myself,"  was  the 
reply.  "  But  how  can  that  be  ?  I  thought  you 
spent  your  time  in  working  out  problems."  "  So 
I  do,  and  that  is  my  enjoyment,"  answered  the 
mathematician.  "  Depend  upon  it,"  he  added, 
"  those  lose  a  torm  of  enjoyment  too  keen  and 
sweet  to  be  described,  who  do  not  know,  after 

1  Myosotis  Alpestris. 


26  THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRY. 

long  effort,  what  is  the  joy  of  recognizing  the 
agreement  between  two  mathematical  formulae." 
If,  in  such  moments  of  profound  satisfaction,  our 
mathematician  had  added  to  his  other  powers  the 
power  adequately  to  utter  the  joy  of  his  u  eu- 
reka," the  expression  of  it  would,  no  doubt,  have 
been  a  high  poem.  f  "  Poetry  is  the  blossom 
and  fragrancy  of  all  human  knowledge  human 
thoughts,  human  passions,  emotions,  language,"  l 
or  it  is  the  fine  wine  that  is  served  at  the  banquet 
of  human  life.  And  what  is  true  of  mathemat- 
ical is  still  more  true  of  other  forms  of  truth. 
Whenever  a  soul  comes  into  vivid  contact  with 
it,  there  springs  up  that  emotion  which  is  the 
essence  of  Poetry.  And  that  this  contact  is  so 
delightful,  that  all  truth  and  the  human  soul  are 
BO  akin,  that  when  they  recognize  each  other,  the 
immediate  result  is  this  thrill  of  joy,  this  pure 
and  high  emotion,  what  does  not  this  fact  hint  of 
the  nature  of  the  soul  and  its  origin  ? 

We  now  then  say  that  /as  Physical  Science 
explains  the  appearances  of  the  material  world 
solely  by  the  properties  of  matter,  and  it  is  its 
business  to  do  so,  so  Poetry  seizes  the  relation  of 
outward  objects  to  the  soul  and  expresses  this, 
and  it  is  its  business  to  do  so.  Physical  Science 
deals  with  the  outward  object  alone.  Poetry  haa 
to  do  with  the  object  plus  the  soul  of  man.  Or, 
to  put  it  otherwise :  from  the  meeting  and  com- 
bined action  of  these  two  forces,  the  outward  ob« 
l  S.  T.  Coleridge,  Lit  Biog.  vol.  ii.  p.  23. 


THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRY.  27 

ject  and  the  soul,  there  arises  a  creation,  or  ema- 
nation, different  from  either,  but  partaking  of  the 
nature  of  both.  And  it  is  the  business  of  true 
poetry  to  express  this..  Any  real  object,  vividly 
apprehended,  we  thus  see,  will  awaken  in  an  in- 
telligent and  emotioijal  being  a  response  which  is 
the  beginning  of  poetry.  The  depth  and  breadth 
and,  volume  of  that  response  will,  of  course,  be 
proportioned  to  the  nobility  of  the  object  which 
evokes  it,  and  to  the  responsive  capacity  of  the 
mind  to  which  it  makes  its  appeal.  And  if  it  be 
asked,  How  are  we  to  estimate  the  nobility  of 
any  object  ?  we  may  say  that  its  measure  will  be 
the  variety  and  strength  and  elevation  of  the 
emotions  which  it  has  the  power  of  evoking  in 
those  spirits  which  are  most  finely  touched.  The 
deeper,  the  larger,  the  higher  the  object  pre- 
sented to  a  soul  fitted  to  receive  it,  the  greater 
will  be  the  body  of  emotion  with  which  that  soul 
will  respond  to  it,  the  finer  will  be  the  poetry 
which  is  the  expression  of  that  emotion. 

All  delight  we  know  on  earth  arises,  afe  the 
wise  Bishop  Butler  has  told  us,  "  from  a  faculty 
having  its  proper  object,"  and  the  perfection  of 
happiness  would,  consist  "  in  all  the  faculties  hav- 
ing found  their  full  and  adequate  object."  If 
then  those  partial  objects,  those  shadows  of  per- 
fection, which  are  the  highest  objects  vouchsafed 
to  us  here,  awaken  in  us  a  keen  responsive  thrill 
of  emotion,  whose  fittest  utterance  is  song,  what 
shall  it  be  for  a  human  soul  to  be  admitted  to  the 


28       THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRY. 

vision  of  Him  "  who  alone  is  an  object,  an  infi- 
nitely more  than  adequate  object  to  our  most 
exalted  faculties  —  an  adequate  supply  to  all  the 
capacities  of  our  souls,  a  subject  to  the  under- 
standing, an  object  to  the  affections."  In  the 
contemplation  of,  this  truth  long  pondered,  the 
deep  heart  of  the  philosophic  Bishop  breaks  forth 
into  a  strain  of  meditation  in  which  the  conflict 
between  intense  feeling  and  his  habitual  self- 
restraint  seems  almost  to  overpower  him.  And 
what  a  view  does  this  give  of  the  essential  per- 
manence of  Poetry,  how  in  the  essence  it  must 
be  eternal  as  the  soul  of  man  !  It  seems  to  open 
a  glimpse  into  the  meaning  of  the  mysterious 
imagery  of  the  Apocalypse,  and  to  hint  how  it 
will  be  that  the  joy  of  the  Redeemed  before  the 
Throne  can  utter  itself  only  in  that  new  song 
which  none  can  learn  but  they. 

Thus  far  I  have  spoken  only  of  the  feeling  or 
emotion  which  generates  Poetry.  Little  or  noth- 
ing has  been  said  of  that  other  side — the  expres- 
sion of  the  feeling  in  words.  The  mathematician 
of  whom  I  have  spoken  was  not,  for  all  his  joy,  a 
poet.  Why  ?  Because  though  he  had  the  ma- 
terial of  poetry  within  him  in  the  intense  joy,  he 
had  not  the  power  of  putting  it  forth,  of  making 
it  audible.  He  kept  all  the  delight  to  himself, 
and  could  not  by  utterance  impart  it  to  others. 
He  was  at  best  but  a  dumb  poet  —  a  poet  "in 
posse," not  a  poet  "in  esse,"  as  the  Schoolmen 


THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRY.  29 

speak.  And  the  question  arises,  Is  not  a  dumb 
Poet  a  contradiction  in  terms?  is  it  not  of  the 
very  essence  of  a  poet  that  he  should  be  vocal  ? 
Is  it  not  in  this,  his  power  of  voicing  his  emotion, 
rather  than  in  his  power  of  feeling  it,  that  he  is 
distinguished  from  common  men  ?  Here  we  come 
on  a  great  controversy  on  which  T  shall  not  vent- 
ure to  dogmatize.  Wordsworth,  we  all  remem* 
ber,  held  that 

"  Many  are  the  poets  that  are  sown 
By  Nature  ;  men  endowed  with  highest  gifts, 
The  vision  and  the  faculty  divine  ; 
Yet  wanting  the  accomplishment  of  verse." 

But  Goethe  and  many  others  with  him  hold 
that  without  the  power  of  poetic  expression  there 
can  be  no  poet ;  that  as  well  might  you  speak  of 
a  child  being  born  which  was  a  mind  without  a 
body,  as  of  poetry  existing  in  the  soul  which  does 
not  embody  itself  in  language;  that,  if  we  are 
to  divide  Poetry  into  essence  and  expression,  the 
garment  of  musical  words  is  indeed  the  more  es- 
sential of  the  two  —  or  rather,  that  Poetry  is  non- 
existent till  it  has  clothed  itself  in  words ;  that 
in  the  true  poet  the  emotion  and  the  expression 
of  it  come  into  being  at  once,  and  are  one.  To 
this  side  Coleridge,  I  believe,  would  lean,  for  we 
find  him  saying  — I"  The  sense  of  musical  delight, 
with  the  power  of  producing  it,  is  a  gift  of  im- 
agination, and  ....  may  be  cultivated  and  im- 
proved, but  can  never  be  learned."' 

On  the  whole,  then,  without  deciding  whether 


80  THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRJ. 

the  essence  of  the  poetic  nature  lies  in  the  capao- 
I  ity  of  feeling  the  emotion,  and  brooding  over  the 
|  shaping  thought,  or  in  the  power  of  projecting  it 
in  words,  this  may  be  said :  —  Even  if  the  poten- 
tial poet  may  be  silent,  the  actual  poet  must  add 
the  power  of  embodying  his  emotion  in  melodious 
words.  And  this  from  no  conventional  artifice 
of  literature ;  but  because,  before  the  existence 
of  any  literature,  the  natural  expression  of  strong 
emotion  is  a  chant,  a  song.  There  is  an  essential 
kinship  between  the  waves  of  excited  feeling 
within  the  breast,  the  heaving  of  the  soul  under 
the  power  of  emotion,  and  a  corresponding  rhyth- 
mical cadence  in  the  words  which  utter  it.  Song 
or  chant  and  emotion  are  as  intrinsically  allied  as 
word  and  thought^/  The  poet  is  the  man  whose 
emotions,  intenser  tfran  those  of  other  men,  nat- 
urally find  a  vent  for  themselves  in  some  form  of 
harmonious  words,  whether  this  be  the  form  of 
metre  or  of  balanced  and  musical  prose.  The 
rhythmical  vibrations  of  his  soul  long  to  project 
themselves  into  some  sonorous  medium.  And  for 
poetry  to  lie  as  it  does  dead  in  our  printed  books, 
to  be  read  merely  by  the  eye,  or,  if  uttered  aloud, 
to  be  read  as  one  would  a  newspaper,  is  as  unnat- 
ural, as  emptying  to  it  of  its  meaning,  as  it  is  for 
the  lovely  wild-flower  to  be  seen  dried  and  color- 
less within  the  leaves  of  a  herbarium.  Not  of 
lyrical  poetry  only,  though  of  it  preeminently, 
but  of  all  high  poetry,  may  it  be  said,  that  it  is 
only  then  fitly  uttered  when  it  is  chanted,  not 


THE  SOURCES  OF  POETRY.  81 

read,  and  so  it  is  with  a  chant  that  most  poets 
have  recited  their  own  poetry.  As  Wordsworth 
tells  us,  "  Though  the  accompaniment  of  a  mu- 
sical instrument  be  dispensed  with,  the  true  poet 
does  not  therefore  abandon  his  privilege  distinct 
from  that  of  the  mere  proseman  ; 

"  He  murmurs  near  the  running  brooks, 
A  music  sweeter  than  their  own." 

It  is  a  sad  divorce  that  has  long  been  made  be- 
tween poetry  and  song.  We  shall  never  know 
the  full  power  of  Poetry  till  she  has  wandered 
back  to  her  original  home,  and  found  there  her 
long-severed  sister,  Music.  Only  then,  if  they 
could  find  each  other  again,  and  come  forth  to 
the  world  in  blended  might,  should  we  know  the 
full  compass  of  that  marvelous  creation  which 
we  call  Poetry. 


CHAPTER   II. 

THE  POETIC  FEELING  AWAKENED  BY  THE  WORLD 
OF   NATURE. 

IF  the  view  taken  in  the  former  chapter  of  the 
genesis  of  Poetry  be  true,  if  any  existence  keenly 
realized  may  awaken  it,  must  not  that  material 
framework  which  encompasses  us  from  the  cradle 
to  the  grave  enter  most  intimately  into  our  ear- 
liest and  most  permanent  feelings,  and  color  all 
the  poetry  which  expresses  them  ?  For  are  not 
the  visible  earth  and  skies  the  storehouse  from 
which  imagination  furnishes  herself  with  her  ear- 
liest forms,  and  draws  her  broadest  as  well  as 
most  delicate  resemblances  ?  Are  these  not  the 
substance  round  which  the  affections  twine  many 
pf  their  first  and  finest  tendrils  ?  Next  to  the 
household  faces,  is  not  the  visible  world  the  ear- 
liest existence  that  we  know,  the  last  we  lose 
sight  of  in  our  earthly  sojourn  ?  All  his  life  long 
man  is  encompassed  with  it,  and  never  gets  be- 
yond its  reach.  He  lies  an  infant  in  the  lap  of 
Nature  before  he  has  awakened  to  any  conscious- 
iiess.  When  consciousness  does  awaken  within 
him,  the  external  world  is  the  occasion  of  the 
awakening,  the  first  thing  he  learns  to  know  at 


THE  POETIC  FEELING  AWAKENED,  ETC.      33 

the  same  time  that  he  learns  his  mother's  look 
and  his  own  existence.  For  the  growing  boy  she 
is  the  homely  nurse  that,  long  before  schools  and 
school-masters*  intermeddle  with  him,  feeds  his 
mind  with  materials,  pouring  into  him  alike  the 
outward  framework  of  his  thought  and  the  colors 
that  flush  over  the  chambers  of  his  imagery. 
The  expressive  countenance  of  this  earth  and  of 
these  heavens,  glad  or  pensive,  stern  or -dreary, 
sublime  or  homely,  is  looking  in  on- his  heart  at 
every  hour  and  mingling  with  his  dreams.  Nat- 
ure is  wooing  his  spirit  in  manifold  and  mysteri- 
ous ways,  to  elevate  him  with  her  vastness  and 
sublimity,  to  gladden  him  with  her  beauty,  to  de- 
press him  with  her  bleakness,  to  restore  him  with 
her  calm.  This  quick  interchange  of  feeling  be- 
tween the  world  without  and  the  world  within, 
this  vast  range  of  sympathy,  so  subtle,  so  unceas- 
ing, so  mysterious,  is  a  fact  as  certain  and  a~s  real 
as  the  flow  of  the  tides  or^the  motion  of 'the 
earth.*f^ Yet,  though  truth  it  be,  it  is  one  which 
Science  cannot  recognize,  and  which  slie  has  left 
wholly  to  the  poet.  It  is  his  to  witness  to  the 
fait  of  this  intimacy  —  kinship,  I  might  say  — 
between  the  movements  of  Nature  aiidjhe  heart 
of  Man,  to  represent  ~^Hi$  relation  and  interpret 
it.  And  though  he  may  never  be  able  fully  to 
compass  or  exhaust  all  the  import  of  these  rela- 
tions, or  to  penetrate  to  the  bottom  of  the  secret, 
yet  it  is  one  chief  office  of  the  poet  to  express  it, 
to  get  it  recognized,  to  keep  alive  the  sense  of 


34        THE  POETIC  FEELING  AWAKENED 

among  his  fellow-men,  and  to  interpret  to  them, 
1  as  best  he  may,  those  enduring  yet  tender  intima- 
|  cies  that  exist  between  their  hearts  and  the  wide 
world  of  eye  and  ear  that  surrounds  him. 

This  mighty  process  of  influencing  man,  not 
only  through  his  corporeal  neecte,  but  in  the  more 
delicate  recesses  of  the  heart,  the  outward  world,' 
it  is  clear,  must  have  been  carrying  on  unremit- 
tingly since  the  earliest  appearance  of  man  on 
the  earth.  But  what  may  have  been  the  phases 
of  it  in  primeval  times,  before  history  finds  man, 
is  a  question  I  do  not  propose  to  enter  on.  No 
doubt,  even  in  the  most  remote  §ras,  when  savage 
men  dwelt  naked  in  caves,  or  cowered  in  abject 
worship,  before  the  blind  forces  of  Nature,  and 
lived  in  terror  of  wild  beasts,  or  of  each  other, 
even  then  there  must  have  been  moments  when 
their  hearts  were  imaginatively  touched,  as  either 
the  hurricane  or  the  thunder  awed  them,  or  Nat- 
ure looked  on  them  more  benignly  through  the 
sunset  or  the  dawn.  In  that  later  stage,  when 
the  Aryan  family  had  reached  their  mythologiz- 
ing  era,  and  owing  to  the  weakness  of  their  ab- 
stracting powers  and  the  strength  of  untutored 
imagination,  were  weaving  the  appearances  of 
earth  and  sky  into  their  hierarchies  of  gods, 
Nature  and  Imagination  were  face  to  face,  and 
and  were  all  in  all. 

The  other  intellectual  powers  of  man  were  as 
yet  comparatively  dormant.  He  had  not  yet 
learned  consciously  to  disengage  the  thoughts  o£ 


BY  THE   WORLD  OF  NATURE. 


himself  and  of  God  from  the  visible  appearances 
in  which  they  were  still  entangled.     But  to  trace 
the  movements  of  Imagination  through  that  pri- 
meval time'  forms  no  part  of  my  present  task. 
Even  without  attempting  this,  there"  is  more  than 
enough  to  detain  our  thoughts,  if  we  attempt  to 
trace,  even  in  outline,  some  of  the  ways  in  which 
the  human  and  poeti6  imagination  has  worked 
on  the  outward  world  in  that  later  stage  when 
the  three'  great  entities,  God,  Man,  and  Naturg, 
were  in  *  thought  clearly  distinguished.     Though 
in  studying  our  present  subject  it  *  may  be  neces- 
sary for  clearnesses  sake,  in  some  measure  to  iso- 
late Nature  in  thought  from  the  other  two  great   . 
objects  of  contemplation,  with  which  in  reality 
it  is  so  closely  interwoven,  we  must  never  con- 
ceive of  'iff  as  if  it  were  really  a  separate  and 
independent  existence.,    However  we  may  for  a' 
moment  regard  Nature^by  herself,  we  must  not 
forget  that  in  reality  we  can  never  contemplate 
it  apart  from  the  other  two  entities  on  which  it  \ 
depends;   that  Nature  as  mere  isolated  appear-/ 
ance,  without  a  mind  to  contemplate  and  a  power* 
»/  to  support  it,  is  meaningless  ;  that  all  the  thre* 
A  objects  of  knowledge  coexist  at  every  moment! 
interpenetrate  and  modify  each  other  at  every! 
turn  of  thougnt  ;  and  that  it  is  I  o  the  light  re-\ 
fleeted  on  Nature  from  the  other  two  that  she\ 
owes  large  part  of  her  meaning,  her  ;  tendeiness,  I 
her  suggestiveness,  her  sublimity. 

The  tendency  to  isolate  Nature  and  to  regard 


•  •  a  i  t\i  r-  r-» 


gA     f^THE  POETIC  FEELING  AWAKENED 

it  as  a  self-subsisting  thing  cut  off  from  other  ex- 
istence, has  been  strong  ever  since  man  came  to 
be  clearly  conscious  of  his  own  distinctness  from 
the  world.  In  this,  as  in  every  other  realm  of 
thought,  progress  is  slow;  it  requires  long  ages 
to  get  to  the  right  mental  attitude.  Among  the 
ethnic  races,  at  least,  there  were  first  the  two 
periods  already  noticed  -«-  one  in  which  man 
crouched  in  blind  abject  terror  in  presence  of  the 
elements  ^-another  marked  by  that  brighter  Nat- 
ure-worship embodied  in  the  Aryan  mythology, 
which,  though  past  its  prime,  was  still  surviving 
when  the  Homeric  poems  were  composed. }  Then 
succeeded  the  time  when,  on  the  one  hand,  the 
mind  of  man  separated  itself  from  the  world  and 
asserted  its  distinct  existence  ;  and  when,  on  the 
other,  the  thought  of  Deity,  under  the  guidance 
of  reflection  and  philosophy,  gradually  extracted 
Itself  from  the  visible  appearances  in  which  it 
had  been  so  long  imbedded. 

When  this  great  change  had  made  itself  felt, 
I  and  when,  at  the  same  time,  out-of-door  life  gave 
/  place  to  life  in  cities,  Nature  in  a  great  measure 
i   lost  its  hold  on  man's  regards,  and  retired  into 
/    the  background  as  a  lifeless  mechanical  thing, 
/    without  interest  or  beauty  or  any  intimacy  with 
man.     The  material  world,  indeed,^  had  still  its 
.    utilitarian  value.     It  ministered  to  man's  bodily 
^ants  in  the  thousand  ways  ^that  immemorial 
usage  handed  down,  and  which  science  in  recent 
times  has  so  greatly  multiplied.    If  the  refreshing 


BY  THE  WORLD  OF  NATURE.  87 

presence  of  Nature  still  blended  unawares  with 
the  animal  spirits  of  men,  and  cheered  them  when 
they  were  weary,  yet  the  multitudes  cast  on  it  no 
imaginative  regards,  and  cared  nothing  for  the 
poetry  which  mediates  between  the  eye  and  the 
heart.  This  seems  a  true  account  of  the  mental 
attitude  of  the  great  civilized  communities,  down 
even  to  recent  times.  And,  notwithstanding  the 
great  movement  toward  Nature  which  is  said  to 
characterize  this  modern  era,  one  may  well  doubt 
whether  the  sentiment  has  really  penetrated  the 
hearts  of  even  th£  most  cultivated  men.  -Such 
things  must  always  be 'difficult  to' gauge.  Yet 
one  cannot  but  sometimes  wonder,  if  from  the 
modern  love  of  Nature,  and  the  much  talk  about 
it,  there  could  be  deducted  all  that  may  be  ^et 
down  to  love  of  change,  imitation,  fashion,  and 
the  desire  to  meet  the  expectations  of  refined 
society,  how  much  would  remain  of  feeling  that 
was  native,  genuine,  and  spontaneous. 

A  few,  we  may  believe,  there  have  been  in 
every  age,  and  more  perhaps  in  this  than  in  for- 
mer ages,  to  ^rhom,  in  spite  of  the  prosaic  atmos- 
phere that  surrounded  them,  Nature  was  some- 
thing more  than  a  dead  machine,  something  even 
worthy  of  affection.  Poets,  too,  were  born  from 
age  to  age,  favorite  children  of 

"  Gaudentes  rare  Camoenae," 

who  had  their  hearts  opened  in  a  preeminent  de- 
gree to  receiye  the  iove  of  Nature  themselves, 
and  to  awaken  it  in  other  hearts  by  the  musio 


38        THE  POETIC  FEELING  AWAKENED 

which  they  lent  to  it.  Yet  neither  the  poets,  nor 
the  few  apprehensive  spirits  who  sympathized 
with  them,  could  do  much  to  make  head  against 
the  prosaic  ways  of  thinking  by  which  they  were 
surrounded.  It  was  only  with  furtive  and  occa- 
sional glances  that  even  the  poets  of  past  ages 
were  allowed  to  look  at  Nature  as  they  would, 
only  by  a  kind  of  sufferance  that  they  were  al- 
lowed to  express  the  tender  love  they  felt  for  her. 
The  feelings  which  they  had  in  her  presence  were 
put  down  to  imagination,  which  was  a  faculty  of 
falsehood,  and  the  words  which  they  used  regard- 
ing her  were  supposed  to  be  tropes  and  hyper- 
boles that  had  no  meaning.  The  science  and  the 
philosophy,  as  well  as  the  common  belief  which 
surrounded  them,  had  settled  it,  that  Nature  was 
as  inanimate  as  any  piece  of  man's  manufacture. 
And  what  were  a  few  poets,  with  their  weak  sing- 
ing, a  few  dreamers,  with  their  flimsy  fancies, 
that  they  could  withstand  the  tyrant  tradition, 
even  though,  half  unconsciously,  all  their  highest 
inspiration  witnessed  against  it  ?  The  instinctive 
faith  of  the  poet  cannot  be  vindicated  till,  noj;  in 
Poetry  only,  but  by  Science  and  Philosphy  also, 
vhe  unity  and  the  life  that  is  in  Nature  are  fully 
recognized,  —  till  the  whole  visible  ^orld*  »not  in 
trope  and  figure,  but  in  literal  truth,  is^felt  ,to  be 
the  embodied  thought  of  a  mind  which  is  in  Nat- 
are  and  above  it,  and  which  fills  the  Universe. 
Not  till  this  conviction  has  come  home  to  man  as 
a  sober  truth  of  reason,  can  we  feel  that  Nature 


BY  THE   WORLD  OF  NATURE.  39 

is  intended  to  minister  no  furtive,  but  a  legitimate 
delight  to  the  eye,  to  furnish  an  interest  to  the 
understanding,  beauty  and  suggestiveness  to  the 
imagination7  calm  and  restoration  to  Ibhe  heart. 
Otherwise  she  becomes,  none  tne  less  for  all  her 
beauty,  to  those  who  fain  would  love  her,  a  cruel 
and  all-devouring  Sphinx. 

Not,  however,  that  the  poet  busies  himself 
with  the  question  as  to  the  essential  nature  of 
the  material  world,  or  inquires  whether  there  can 
be  found  in  matter  any  ultimate  and  permanent 
element.  The  analytic  scrutiny  of  appearances 
is  no  part  of  his  concern ;  this  he  willingly  leaves 
to  the  physicist  and  the  metaphysician  to  settle 
between  them.  Whether  matter  be  ultimately 
resolvable  into  indestructible  atoms  out  of  which 
all  visible  forms  are  composed,  or  whether  all  that 
impinges  on  our  senses  be  not  at  bottom  one 
only  force  manifesting  itself  in  infinite  change, 
or  whether  in  the  last  resort  matter  may  be 
only  "a  permanent  possibility  of  sensation,"  or 
"whether  all  force  may  not  be  regarded  as  the 
direct  and  immediate  action  of  the  Divine  Will, 
-—  all  these  are  questions  with  which,  as  poet, 
he  does  not  intermeddle,  though  his  knowledge 
that  such  questions  can  be  asked  may  quicken 
his  sense  of  the  mystery  of  Creation  which  he 
contemplates.  When  poets  have  ventured  to 
make  such  abstract  questions  the  subject  of 
their  poetry,  they  have  not  generally  succeeded. 
The  poetic  strength  of  Lucretius  is  not  seen  in 


40        THE  POETIC  FEELING  AWAKENED 

his  expositions,  able  though  they  are,  of  the 
atomic  philosophy,  but  in  his  vivid  representa- 
tion of  the  inanifold  appearances  of  Nature,  and 
in  his  broad  and  profound  sense  of  the  one  uni- 
versal life  that  pervades  them  all.  The  poet  is 
in  his  proper  place,  not  when  he  scrutinizes  nat- 
ure as  an  analyst,  but  when  he  unreservedly 
accepts  all  her  concrete  appearances  as  they 
come  to  him.  Forms  and  colors  are  given  him 
through  the  eye;  sounds  as  they  reach  him 
through  the  ear;  fragrances  as  wafted  to  his 
sense  of  smell.  On  this  side  of  analysis  there  is 
enough,  and  more  than  enough,  for  him.  The 
outward  appearances  he  feels  more  intensely,  and 
renders  into  words  more  graphically'  than  ordi- 
nary men,  —  no  other  describes  them  so  to  the 
quick,  —  yet  he  does  not  rest  in  them,  but  passes 
with  them  inward  and  brings  them  into  relation 
with  his  own  being,  or  rather  with  the  universal 
heart  of  man.  The  ethereal  blue  of  the  sky  on 
a  fine  spring  day  delights  every  man,  and  some- 
thing of  the  delight  is  no  doubt  due  to  the  mere 
eye,  to  the  adaptation  of  the  object  to  the  visual 
organ;  but  how  much  more  —  who  shall  say?  — 
is  due  to  the  endless  suggestiveness  of  the  sight, 
even  though  of  its  manifold  meaning  nothing 
may  shape  itself  into  words.  But  it  is  the  poet's 
privilege  not  only  to  describe  the  outward  image, 
but  to  draw  out  some  of  the  many  meanings  that 
lie  hid  in  it,  and  so  render  them  as  to  win  re- 
sponse from  his  fellow-men*  It  matters  not, 


BY  THE   WORLD  OF  NATURE.  41 

therefore,  if  it  be  true,  that  all  men  can  know  of 
Nature  is  the  sensations  it  produces  in  himself. 
Even  if  this  be  all,  it  is  enough  for  the  poet. 
Leaving  to  others  to  deal  with  its  physical  uses 
as  the  feeder  and  supporter  of  the  body,  it  is  hia 
to  note  how  it  exhilarates  the  animal  spirits ;  how 
it  passes  into  the  imagination  and  there  becomes 
rich  in  suggestiveness  ;  how'  it  entwines  itself 
round  the  affections ;  how  fruitful  it  is  in  resem- 
blances and  contrasts  to  human  destiny;  what 
large  contemplations  and  high  truths  it  presents 

I  to  the  reason ;  how  even  for  conscience,  though 
it  contains  no  direct  teaching  of^moral  law,  it 

I  supplies  in  its  order  and  harmony  the  best  visi- 
ble images  thereof.  In  fact,  quite  endless  is  the 
wealth  of  meaning  that  lies  hid  in  Nature,  the 
interchange  of  appeal  and  response  that  is  possi- 
ble between  the  world  without  ^and  the  world 
within.  There  is  in  Nature  just  as  much,  or  as 
little,  as  the  soul  of  each  can  see  in  her^-  And 
in  ord^t"  to  see,  the, soul  must  have  been  trained 
for  it  both  by  habitual  converse  with  the  outward 
world,  and  also  by  converse  with  other  regions  of 
being,  Vith  other  teachers.  For  other  teachers 
are  not  less  necessary  than  the  beauty  which  lies 
in  the  face  of  Nature.  • 

Poetry,  we  saw,  is  the  emanation,  the  golden 
exhalation,  as  ii  were,  which  arises  from  the  close 
and  vivid  meeting  of  the  soui  and  the  outward 
object.  If  this  be  so,  the  'soul  must  needs*  con- 
tribute to  the  result  not  less  than  the  objecu 


42        THE  POETIC  FEELING  AWAKENED 

which  appeals  to  it.  What  then  must  be  the 
powei  and  quality  of  that  soul  which  is  capable 
of  taking  in  and  making  full  and  harmonious 
response  to  the  whole  appeal  which  ,  Nature  is 
/continually  making?  There  mus^  be  in  the  first 
I  place  an  $yje  to  observe  accurately  what  it 'sees, 
/  combined  with  the  power  td^describe  this  f aith- 
(  fully  in  words  uncolored  and  undeflected ;  in  the 
first  instance,  by  feelings  or  habits  of  thought 
which  may  be  peculiar  to  the  observer.  There 
must  be  besides  a  sensibility  to  all  outward  ap- 
pearances, as  keenly  alive  to  the  vast  as  to  the 
minute  in  Nature;  to  the  great  movements  of 
the  heavens  and  the  breadths  of  light  and  shadow 
which  they  cast,  not  more  than  to  the  delicate 
-  veinings  that  are  in  the  tiniest  leaf,  to  the  sigh- 
ings  that  are  among  the  reeds,  and  to  the  silent 
openings  of  the  daisy  and  the  celandine.  These 
two  qualities  are  mostly  found  among  those  whose 
childhood  has  passed  in  the  country,  who  have 
known  Nature  as  a  household  friend  that  has 
entwined  itself  among  their  first  Affections.  No 
doubt  there  are  cases  of  city-bred  poets,  such  as 
Keats,  who,  having  been  shut  out  from  free  access 
to  Nature  till  they  were  full-grown  men,  have 
then  taken  to  it  with  an  instinctive  passion.1 

1  Since  writing  the  above  passage,  I  have  been  pleased  to  find 
in  Mr.  Hamerton's  Sylvan  Year,  the  following  passage,  which 
expresses  more  fully  the  same  thought.  He  speaks  (page  68)  of 
"  the  de!ight  of  the  citizen  in  green  leaves,  and  the  intensity  01 
•engation  about  Nature  which  we  find  in  poets  who  were  bred  ic 
towns;  whilst  those  who  have  lived  much  in  the  country,  though 


BY  TEE  WORLD  OF  NATURti.  4b 

But  even  in  these  rare  cases  there  will  generally 
be  felt  in  their  descriptions  something  exagger- 
ated, that  shows  the  wantyof  habitual  familiarity 
with  the  ways  of  Nature,  and  makes  us  feel'that 
it  has  been  approached  rather  on  set  purpose  as 
an  object  of  artistic  study,  than  known  with  the 
easy  intimacy  of  early  friendship.  If  to 'these 
two  qualities  we  add  imagination,-  even  as  pene- 
trative as  that  of 'Keats,  which  went  to  the -core 
of  all  it  saw,  even  this 'outfit  of  qualities  would 
not  be  sufficient  adequately  to  render  all  that 
Nature  contains  of  high  and,  noble. 

Such  sensuous  enjoyment  of  Nature,  quickened 
by  imagination,  but  unbalanced  by  deeper  qual- 
ities, has  led  more  than  one,  and  especially  'in 
our^pwn  day,  "to  an  attempted  revival  of  vanished  I 
Paganism,  which,  if  made  the  key-notfe  of  any  | 
Poetry,  is  destructive  of  true  manliness  and  of 
the  highest  human  worth.    By  such-  a  sensuous 
tenfperament,  the  forms  and  colors  and  fragran- 
cies  of  the  outward  world  may  be  deliciously  en- 
joyed and  vividly  rendered.     But  this  is  all.    The 
deeper  tones  that  lie  in  the  silences  of  Nature^ 
will  be  all  inaudible,  unless  the  ear  be  overheat- 
ing at  the  same  time  the  deep  music  of  the  heart. 

For  the  soul  to  apprehend  all  that  Nature  con- 
tains of  meaning,  there  must  be  present  not  only 
the  eye,  keenly  .observing,-  and  tenderly  sensitive 
to  natural  beauty,  but  behind  this  must  be  a 

^hey  know  and  observe  more,  seem  to  feel  more  equably,  and  to 
j{o  to  Nature  with  less  of  sensuous  thirst  and  excitement." 


44       THE  POETIC  FEELING  AWAKENED 

heart  feelingly  alive  to  all  that  is  most  affecting 
in  human  life,  sentiment,  and  destiny.  And  not 
only  this,  but  in  all  survey  of  created  things  the 
upward  look,  unexpressed  it  may  be,  yet  ever 
present,  toward  the  Uncreated.  It  cannot  but 
affect  even  the  poet's  feeling  about  the  most 
common  material  things,  what  may  be  his  regard* 
toward  that  Unseen  Presence  on  which,  not 
Nature  only,  but  the  spirit  of  man  reposes.  As 
he  looks  on  the  face  of  earth,  sea,  and  sky,  tha 
thought,  whence  come  these  things,  whither*  tend 
they,  what  is  their  origin  and  their  'end,  must 
habitually  enter  in  and  color*  that  which-  the 
eye  beholds.  It  can  hardly  be  but  that  a  man's 
inner  thoughts  about  these  things  will  find  their 
way  out  and  color  the  observation  of  his  aye. 
Even  the  ethereal  beauty  of  Shelley's  descrip- 
tions-^- his  perception  of^~the  motion  of  clouds 
and  shadows  and  sunbeams — his  delight  in  all 
skyey  and  evanescent  things  too  delicate  for 
grosser  eyes,  —  you  cannot  read  them  long  with- 
out being  crossed  by  some  Breath  blown  f ronThis 
own  distempered  moral  atmosphere, '  The  "  sky- 
cleaving"  crags  suggest  to  himvlieaven-defying 
minds,  and  his  mountains^  have  a  voice  "  to  repeal 
.arge  codes  of  fraud  and  woe."  Byron,  —  though 
his  later  poetry  contains  noble  passages  on  mount- 
ain scenery,  even  the  high  Alps  are  hardly 
strong  enough  to  lure  him  into  temporary  forget- 
fulness  of  his  own  unhappy  self ,  and  his  quarrel 
with  mankind.  In  fact,  so  closely  and  deeply 


B7  THE   WORLD  OF  NATURE.        ^    45 

united  are  all  the  parts  of  the  universe,  that  no 
one  can  apprehend  the  full  compass  of  its  mani-  y 
fold  harmonies,  whose  own  heart  is  not  filled 
with  that  central  harmony  which  sets  it  right 
with  God  and  man- 


CHAPTER  Hi. 
POETIC  AND  SCIENTIFIC  WONDEB. 

SDme  one  may  ask,  Is  not  imagination 
generally  at  war  with  reason  and  truth  ?  Is  not 
the  quarrel  between,  Poetry  and  Philosophy  as 
old  as  the  days  of  Plato  ?  Did  not  he  feel  this 
so  keenly  that  he  banished  poets  as  false  teachers 
from  his  well-ordered  State  ? 

Luckily  we  have  not  to  answer  this  question  in 
all  its  breadth  and  complexity ;  we  are  not  now 
called  to  defend  the  truth  of  Poetry  in  its  de- 
lineations of  human  character  and  emotions. 
Our  subject  confines  us  to  that  simpler  aspect  of 
the  question  which  concerns  the  action  of  im- 
agination on  the  external  world.  When  the  eye 
rests  on  the  ranging  landscape,  and  the  heart 
responds  to  the  beauty  of  it,  the  emotion  which 
is  evoked  is  as  true  and  as  rational  as  is  the 
action  of  any  law  of  Nature.  This  kindling  of 
heart  in  the  presence  of  Nature  may  be  said  to 
be  "another  aspect  of  reason."  It  is  not  con- 
fined to  any  one  order  of  men  or  stage  of  civiliza- 
tion, but  belongs  alike  to  the  child,  the  peasant, 
and  the  philosopher,  if  only  the  heart  be  natural 
and  unspoiled.  No  doubt  the  imaginative  frame 


POETIC  AND  SCIENTIFIC  WONDER.       47 

of  mind  differs  in  each  according  to  difference  of 
mental  habits,  but  in  all  alike  it  is  essentially 
one.  It  is  a  spontaneous  and  unconscious  ac- 
knowledgment of  the  beauty  of  the  Universe  — 
a  proof  to  those  who  think  about  it  that  the  Uni- 
verse was  made  for  the  soul  of  man,  and  the  soul 
for  the  Universe,  that  there  is  between  them  a 
wonderful  harmony,  the  one  answering  to  the 
other  as  the  harp-strings  to  the  hand  of  the  mu- 
sician. 

Take  instances  of  this  feeling,  not  from  past 
times,  but  as  it  may  exist  in  our  own  day.  The 
Yarrow  shepherd,  as  he  goes  forth  at  dawn  and 
sees  morning  spread  on  the  hills  of  the  Forest, 
feels  a  momentary  elevation  of  heart  for  whicli 
he  has  no  words,  and  of  which  he  may  be  but 
half-conscious ;  but  in  this  feeling  he  has  within 
him  the  first  stirrings  of  that  which,  when  the 
poet  fashions  it  into  fitting  words,  becomes  an 
immortal  song.  His  grandfather,  a  hundred 
years  ago  or  less,  when  he  saw  the  first  streaks 
of  dawn  strike  some  lonely  peak,  or  the  early 
pencilings  of  light  falling  down  into  some  hid- 
den dell,  embodied  his  feelings  of  that  beauty  in 
the  imagination  of  Fairies  retiring  from  their 
moonlight  dances  into  the  green  knolls  where 
they  made  their  homes.  The  Ettrick  Shepherd, 
in  his  childhood,  was  perhaps  among  the  last 
who  had  a  genuine  feeling  and  belief  of  these 
symbols.  They  passed  with  him,  but  though  the 
symbols  have  vanished  the  same  appearances  J«T 


48       POETIC  AND  SCIENTIFIC  WONDER. 

main,  and  awaken  the  old  feeling,  and  the  feel- 
ing still  needs  a  language. 

So  too  was  it  with  that  Westmoreland  dales- 
man who,  as  he  walked  with  the  poet  Words- 
worth by  the  side  of  a  brook,  suddenly  said  to 
him,  with  great  spirit  and  a  lively  smile,  "  I  like 
to  walk  where  I  can  hear  the  sound  of  a  beck.15 
Beck  is  the  Westmoreland  word  for  what  in  Eng- 
land is  called  a  brook,  in  Scotland  a  burn*  u  I 
cannot  but  think,"  adds  the  poet,  "that  this  man, 
without  being  conscious  of  it,  has  had  many 
devout  feelings  connected  with  the  appearances 
which  presented  themselves  to  him  in  his  em- 
ployment as  a  shepherd,  and  that  the  pleasure  of 
his  heart  was  an  acceptable  offering  to  the  Di- 
vine Being."  This  is  Wordsworth's  reflection.  I 
shall  but  add  that  his  liking  to  hear  the  sound  of 
a  beck  was  a  proof  that  the  outward  sound  had 
ceased  to  be  a  mere  commonplace  to  him,  and 
passing  inward,  had  awakened  an  imaginative 
echo  which  is  the  birth  of  poetry. 

Or  take  another  instance  —  that  youth,  a  shep- 
herd lad,  but  more  poet  and  philosopher  than 
shepherd,  whom  Wordsworth  describes  watching 
the  sunrise  on  the  Highland  mountains :  — 

"  For  the  growing  youth, 
What  soul  was  his,  when  from  the  naked  top 
Of  some- bold  headland,  he  beheld  the  sun 
Eise  up,  and  bathe  the  world  in  light.    He  looked— 
Ocean  and  earth,  the  solid  frame  of  earth, 
And  ocean's  liquid  mass,  beneath  him  lay 
In  gladness  and  deep  joy.    The  clouds  were  touched. 


POETIC  AND  SCIENTIFIC   WONDER.       49 

And  in  their  silent  faces  did  he  read 
Unutterable  love.    Sound  needed  none, 
Nor  any  voice  of  joy ;  his  spirit  drank 
The  spectacle :  seniation,  soul,  and  form 
All  melted  into  him ;  they  swallowed  up 
His  animal  being ;  in  them  did  he  live, 
And  by  them  did  he  live ;  they  were  his  life. 
In  such  access  of  mind,  in  such  high  hour 
Of  visitation  from  the  living  God, 
Thought  was  not ;  in  enjoyment  it  expired. 
No  thanks  he  breathed,  he  proffered  no  request; 
Rapt  into  still  communion  which  transcends 
The  imperfect  offices  of  prayer  and  praise, 
His  mind  was  a  thanksgiving  to  the  power 
That  made  him ;  it  was  blessedness  and  love/' 

As  we  read  such  a  passage,  the  thought  invol- 
untarily arises,  What  if  the  said  youth,  instead 
of  being  a  nursling  of  nature  among  the  hills 
of  Atholl,  had  been  college-bred,  and  crammed 
with  all  the  'ologies  which  Physical  Science  now 
teaches,  would  he  still  have  had  the  same  elevated 
joy  in  presence  of  that  spectacle  ?  It  is  the  old 
question  which  Plato  asked,  and  which  many 
since  have  asked  down  to  our  own  time.  In  1842 
Haydon  wrote  to  Wordsworth,  recalling  a  dinner- 
party which  took  place  many  years  before  at  the 
painter's  house:  "  Don't  you  remember  Keats 
proposing  '  Confusion  to  the  memory  of  Newton,' 
and  upon  your  insisting  on  an  explanation  before 
you  drank  it,  his  saying,  Because  he  destroyed 
the  poetry  of  the  rainbow  by  reducing  it  to  a 
prism  ?  "  Suppose  the  Atholl  shepherd  lad  had 
been  an  optician,  and  understood  all  the  laws  of 
light  by  which  the  effulgent  hues  of  sunrise  were 
4 


50       POETIC  AND  SCIENTIFIC   WObpER. 

elicited ;  suppose,  further,  that  he  had  been  an 
astronomer,  and  as  he  saw  the  sunrise  had  begun 
to  reflect,  It  is  not  the  sun  that  I  see  rising,  but  it 
is  the  earth  that  is  rotating  on  her  own  axis,  and 
now  turning  her  side  toward  the  sun,  that  causes 
all  that  I  now  see ;  and  that  axis  is  not  vertical, 
but  slants  obliquely  to  the  plane  of  its  orbit,  — 
supposing  these,  and  a  hundred  other  truths, 
which  Physical  Astronomy  teaches,  had  come 
into  his  mind,  would  he  still  have  had  that  sub- 
lime joy? 

Or  suppose,  again,  he  had  been  a  geologist, 
and,  as  he  gazed  over  the  mountain  ridges,  had 
begun  to  think  of  them  as  a  record  of  commotions 
that  took  place  in  far-back  geological  eras,  and 
to  reflect  how  the  stratified  layers  of  which  these 
mountains  are  composed  had  been  formed  by  the 
slime  deposited  at  the  bottom  of  a  long  since 
vanished  sea;  how  they  had  been  upheaved  by 
the  action  of  subterranean  forces ;  how  some  of 
the  great  depressions  which  we  call  valleys,  or 
those  rents  in  the  mountains,  now  filled  by  sea- 
\ochs,  had  been  caused  by  the  cracking  of  the 
earth's  crust,  while  it  was  still  a  heated  mass, 
glowing  from  the  primeval  fires ;  how  other  lesser 
glens  and  corries  had  been  sculptured  out  of  the 
solid  earth  by  Nature's  graving  tools,  ice-wedges, 
glaciers,  rain,  and  rivers,  —  in  the  presence  of 
such  scientific  thoughts  as  these,  what  would  be 
come  of  the  boy's  imaginative  and  devout  ecstasy  ? 

In  answer,  it  may  be  said  that  whether, the 


POETIC  AND  SCIENTIFIC   WONDER.       51 

scientific  man  shall  feel  this  spontaneous  glow  in 
the  presence  of  the  great  spectacles  of  Nature  or 
not,  depends  not  on  his  scientific  knowledge,  but 
^on  his  natural  temperament,  on  the  amount  of 
soul  there  is  in  him,  underlying  his  attainments. 
If  he  be  so  entirely  the  man  of  science,  if  the  in- 
tellect has  so  entirely  absorbed  his  being  that  he 
never  gets  beyond  analyzing,  comparing,  and  rea- 
soning on  the  appearances  he  sees,  then  he  will 
look  without  emotion  on  the  grandest  ongoings 
of  Nature  ;  he  will  see  in  them  only  a  subject  for 
investigation  —  nothing  more.  But  if,  as  has 
often  been  the  case,  the  physicist  be  a  man  not 
only  of  wide  and  accurate  knowledge,  but  of  large 
jsoul,  —  if  his  knowledge  has  become  a  part  of 
him,  has  melted  into  his  being,  then  his  heart  will 
be  free  to  kindle  and  rejoice  at  the  great  things 
of  Nature  which  he  sees,  as  genuinely  as  the  un- 
reflecting child,  the  thoughtful  peasant,  or  the 
most  spontaneous  poet. 

As  genuinely,  but  with  a  difference :  the  eye 
of  the  imaginative  man  of  science  will  take  in 
all  that  these  others  do,  and  more.  His  admira- 
tion will  be  fuller,  larger,  more  instructed.  The 
knowledge  that  has  been  .gradually  lodged  in  his 
mind,  and  become  a  part  of  it,  will  pass  into  ais 
eye,  and  enable  him  to  see,  on  whatever  side  of 
the  Universe  he  looks,  more  complicated  marvels, 
more  wonderful  correspondences. 

"In  Wonder,"  says  Coleridge,  "all  Philosophy 
began  :  in  Wonder  it  ends  :  and  Admiration  fills 


52       POETIC  AND  SCIENTIFIC   WONDER. 

up  the  interspace."  The  last  clause  I  should 
change  thus,  —  and  Investigation  fills  up  the  in- 
terspace. In  the  first  Wonder  and  in  the  last  the 
Philosopher  and  the  Poet  are  akin  to  each  other. 
Both  wonder,  both  admire  what  they  see,  but  this 
incipient  wonder  tends  to  different  results.  The 
unscientific  poet,  just  like  the  child  and  the 
thoughtful  peasant,  wonders  at  the  beauty  that  is 
in  the  face  of  Nature,  and  at  its  mystery,  seeks 
no  physical  explanations  of  it,  but  reads  its  moral 
and  spiritual  meaning,  and  tries  to  utter  it. ""The 
man  of"  science  equally  begins  with  wonder  at 
what  he  sees,  but  his  wonder  leads  him  on  to  seek 
for  an  explan^ion,  to  search  for  the  laws  which 
regulate  Wie  appearances,  if  haply  he  may  find 
them. 

Then  comes  the  long  interspace  of  toilsome 
labor,  of  painful  analysis,  of  rigorous  induction. 
Experiment,  analysis,  deductive  and  inductive 
reasoning,  by  which  chiefly  Science  works,  are 
intellectual  acts  quite  distinct  from  imaginative 
intuition  and  emotion,  and,  in  some  degree,  op- 
posed to  them.  It  cannot  be.  that  these  distinct 
processes  can  be  combined  in  one  intellectual  act. 
They  can  hardly  go  on  in  one  mind  at  the  same 
time.  While  a  man  is  immersed  in  these  scien- 
tific processes,  they  preclude  the  poetic  vision  for 
the  time.  For  many  men  they  scare  away  poetry 
from  the  world  forever. 

Not  so  with  the  largest,  most  sovereign  minds 
of  Science.  Lesser  men  of  dry  or  narrow  minds 


POETIC  AND  SCIENTIFIC  WONDER.       S3 

may  be  so  entangled  in  the  meshes  of  their  own 
understanding  as  never  to  escape  from  them,  or 
may  find  more  delight  in  the  cleverness  of  their 
own  explanations  than  in  the  wonderful  things 
which  they  explain.  But  the  larger  minds,  when 
they  have  done  their  work,  emerge  in  time  from 
the  study  and  the  laboratory,  and  look  abroad 
with  expanded  vision  and  prof ounder  reverence 
on  that  Universe,  some  small  part  only  of  which 
it  has  been  given  them  to  understand.  Kepler, 
after  he  had  discovered  so  far  the  laws  of  planet- 
ary motion,  said  that  all  that  he  had  been  able 
to  do  was  to  read  a  few  of  the  thoughts  of  God. 
A  short  time  before  his  death,  Ne\^|pn  is  reported 
to  have  said,  and  I  give  the  oft-told  3%ry  in\the 
authentic  words,  "  I  do  not  know  what  I  mJty  ap- 
pear to  the  world,  but  to  myself  I  seem  to  have 
been  only  like  a  boy  playing  on  the  sea-shore, 
and  diverting  myself  in  now  and  then  finding  a 
smoother  pebble  or  a  prettier  shell  than  ordinary, 
whilst  the  great  ocean  of  truth  lay  all  undiscov- 
ered before  me."  l  A  lesson  surely  to  all  future 
investigators,  and,  as  his  latest  biographer  has 
raid,  "  to  those  especially  who  have  never  even 
£ound  the  smoother  pebble  or  the  prettier  shell.'* 
These  great  men,  so  feeling,  are  in  the  attitude  of 
philosophic  wonder  —  wonder  both  at  part  of  the 
ways  of  God  which  it  has  been  given  them  to  see, 
and  at  that  vaster  part  which  they  feel  to  lie  be- 

1  Life  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  by  Sir  David  Brewster,  voL  ii.  pp. 
407,  408. 


54        POETIC  AND  SCIENTIFIC    WONDER. 

yond  their  vision.  These  laws  which  they  have 
discovered,  what  are  they  ?  whence  come  they  ? 
They  know  that  they  themselves  did  not  make 
them,  only  attained  to  catch  sight  of  them.  They 
know  too  that  the  laws  did  not  make  themselves. 
They  are  beautiful  in  themselves  and  in  their 
benign  operation ;  they  are  wonderful  in  their 
origin  and  continuance.  This  is  what  those  great 
discoverers  felt.  And  when  they  stood  on  the 
utmost  verge  of  their  scientific  knowledge,  and 
looked  from  what  they  had  been  allowed  to  see 
out  upon  the  great  beyond,  they  were  rapt  into 
that  mood  of  wonder,  akin  to  awe,  which  is  the 
very  essence  of  Poetry.  Had  they,  in  addition  to 
their  great  scientific  insight,  been  endowed  with 
the  gift  of  poetic  utterance  to  express  the  wonder 
which  they  felt,  they  might  have  left  to  the 
world  a  poem  of  scientific  truth  transfigured  by 
the  imagination,  such  as  has  never  yet  been  ut- 
tered. 

Thus  we  see  there  is  a  poetic  glow  of  wonder 
and  emotion  before  Science  begins  its  work; 
there  is  a  larger,  deeper,  more  instructed  wonder 
when  it  ends.  And  either  of  these  may  natu- 
rally express  itself  in  poetry,  though  the  earlier 
wonder  has  done  so  far  more  frequently  than  the 
later.  That  the  contemplation  of  the  Universe 
does  awaken  this  wonder  in  minds  of  the  highest 
scientific  order  appears  in  the  instances  of  Kepler 
and  Newton.  It  has  been  shown  in  the  case  of 
an  original  discover  nearer  our  own  day  than 


POETIC  AND  SCIENTIFIC   WONDER.        55 

either  of  these  —  I  mean  in  that  of  Faraday.  The 
following  account  of  the  imaginative  delight 
which  he  felt  in  his  scientific  investigations  I 
venture  to  quote  from  a  very  suggestive  lecture 
of  Mr.  Stopford  Brooke. 

"Nature  and  her  contemplation,  says  Professor 
Tyndall,  produced  in  him  a  kind  of  spiritual 
exaltation :  his  delight  in  a  sunset  or  a  thunder- 
storm amounted  to  ecstasy.  Our  subjects  are  so 
glorious,  he  says  himself,  that  to  work  at  them 
rejoices  and  encourages  the  feeblest,  delights  and 
contents  the  strongest.  In  this  delight  and  en- 
chantment Jhe  was  always  in  the  temper  of  the 
poet,  and,  like  the  poet,  he  continually  reached 
that  point  of  emotion  which  produces  poetic  crea- 
tion. Onc,e,  after  long  brooding  on  the  subject 
of  force  and  matter,  he  saw,  and  I  am  sure  sud- 
denly, as  a  poet  sees  a  song  from  end  to  end  be- 
fore he  writes  it  down,  —  he  saw,  as  if  lit  by  a 
stream  of  .sudden  light,  the  whole  of  the  Universe 
traversed  by  lines  of  force,  and  these  lines  in  their 
ceaseless  tremors  producing  light  and  radiant 
heat;  and  dashing  forward  on  the  trail  of  his  ideas, 
and  thrilled  into  creation  by  the  emotion  which 
he  felt,  declared  that  these  lines  were  the  lines  of 
gravitating  force,  and  that  the  gravitating  force 
itself  constituted  matter ;  that  is,  he  made  force 
identical  with  matter.  It  was  a  speculation  which 
abolished  at  a  stroke  the  atomic  theory  and  the 
notion  of  an  ether.  Of  the  possibility  of  the 
truth  of  this  I  am  no  judge,"  says  Mr.  Stopford 


66        POETIC  AND  SCIENTIFIC   WONDER. 

Brooke.  "  Faraday  himself  calls  it  the  shadow 
of  a  speculation.  But  who  does  not  see  that  it 
proceeded  after  the  manner  of  poetry ;  that  in  it 
poetry  and  philosophy  went  hand  in  hand?  It 
was  one  of  those  inspired,  sudden  guesses  which 
come  to  the  poet  who  writes  of  the  soul,  coming 
to  the  philosopher  who  writes  of  the  universe. 
In  the  midst  of  unremitting  work  at  details  sud- 
denly a  vision  of  the  glory  of  the  sum  of  things 
flashed  upon  his  sight." 


CHAPTER  IV. 
WILL  SCIENCE  PUT  OUT  POETRY? 

HEBE  an  interesting  question  suggests  itself: 
What  if  the  discoveries  of  Newton  and  Far- 
aday were  to  become  no  longer  the  exclusive  pos- 
session of  the  learned,  but  were  to  pass  into  the 
daily  thoughts  of  the  people  ?  Would  Poetry 
then  be  any  longer  possible?  Were  the  scien- 
tific view  of  the  Universe  to  become  the  popular 
one,  were  all  men  to  regard  the  sight  of  the  heav- 
ens and  the  earth,  not  with  natural  spontaneous 
eyes,  but  as  the  chemist,  the  astronomer,  and  the 
geologist  teach  us  to  regard  them,  —  were  scien- 
tific truth,  in  short,  to  supersede  surface  appear- 
ance, —  would  it  be  any  longer  possible  to  feel,  as 
we  look  on  the  face  of  things,  that  free  and  in- 
tuitive delight  out  of  which  Poetry  has  hitherto 
been  born  ?  In  a  word,  to  express  the  fear  which 
many  hearts  have  felt,  must  not  the  march  of 
Science  trample  out  Poetry  ?  Is  not  Poetry 
destined  to  disappear  in  this  modern  time,  like 
many  other  things,  once  beautiful,  but  now  anti- 
quated ? 

To  this  the  reply  is,  There  is  no  fear  that  it 
will,  as  long  as  human  nature  remains  what  it  is. 


58         WILL  SCIENCE  PUT  OUT  POETRY f 

If  the  view  already  taken  of  the  genesis  of  Poetry 
be  true,  if  man  is  so  made  that  the  vivid  contact 
of  his  soul  with  reality  or  existence  of  any  kind 
must  generate  that  glow  of  emotion  which  is 
poetry,  then  it  cannot  be  that  any  enlargement 
for  him  of  the  domain  of  reality  which  Science 
may  effect  shall  be  the  death  of  Poetry.  For, 
like  Religion,  to  which  it  is  akin,  Poetry  is  thus 
seen  to  be  a  perennial  and  necessary  growth, 
having  its  root,  not  only  in  the  heart  of  man,  but 
ir  the  constitution  of  things,  and  in  the  adap- 
tation of  these,  the  one  to  the  other.  Science, 
however,  though  it  can  never  eradicate  the  po- 
etic feeling,  may  modify  its  nature,  or  rather  may 
enlarge  its  range.  But  let  it  be  clearly  under- 
stood how  it  may  do  this.  The  processes  of  Sci- 
ence and  of  Poetry  are  radically  distinct,  and 
cannot  be  blended  without  confusion  and  injury 
to  both.  Experiment,  analysis,  reasoning  induct- 
ive and  deductive,  these  are  the  means  by  which 
Science  makes  its  advances,  and  with  these  Po 
etry  cannot  rightly  intermeddle.  'Imaginatively 
to  contemplate  the  spectacle  of  the  world  is  pos- 
sible before  Science  has  begun,  it  is  possible,  also, 
after  it  has  completed  its  workv  But  it  is  not 
possible  to  combine  imaginative  contemplation 
and  scientific  investigation  at  the  same  time,  and 
in  one  mental  act.  Only  after  analysis  and  rea- 
soning have  done  their  work  .and  secured  their 
results  is  the  man  of  science  free  to  look  abroad 
on  Nature  with  a  poetic  eye.  .Analysis  and  ex- 


WILL  SCIENCE  PUT  OUT  POETRY *        59 

perimentalizing  cannot  by  any  possibility  be  made 
poetic,  but  their  results  may.  Every  new  prov- 
ince of  knowledge  which  Science  conquers,  Po- 
etry may  in  time  enter  into  and  possess.  But 
Ihis  can  only  be  done  gradually.  Before  imagi- 
nation can  take  up  arid  mould  the  results  of 
Science,  these  must  have  ceased  to  be  difficult, 
laborious,  abstruse.  The  knowledge  of  them 
must  have  become  to  the  poet  himself^  and  in 
some  measure  to  his  audience,  familiar,  habitual, 
spontaneous.  And  here  we  see  how  finely  Sci- 
ence and  Poetry  may  interact  and  minister  each 
to  the  other.  If  it  be  the  duty  of  Science  beneatb 
seeming  confusion  to  search  for  order,  and  its 
happiness  to  find  it  everywhere,  —  an  order  more 
vast,  more  various,  more  deeply  penetrating,  more 
intimate  and  minute  than  uninstructed  men  ever 
dreamed  of,  —  wherever  it  reveals  the  presence  of 
this,  does  it  not  open  new  fields  for  the  imagina- 
tion to  appropriate  ?  For  what  is  order  but  the 
presence  of  thought,  the  ground  of  all  beauty,  the 
witness  to  the  actual  nearness  of  an  upholding 
and  moving  Spirit  ?  This  is  the  vast  new  domain 
which  Science  is  unveiling  and  spreading  out  be- 
fore the  eye  of  Poetry.  And  Poetry,  receiving 
this  large  benefit,  may  repay  the  debt  by  using 
her  own  peculiar  powers  to  familiarize  men's 
thoughts  with  the  new  regions  which  Science  has 
won  for  them.  If  there  is  any  office  which  Im- 
agination can  fulfill,  it  is  this.  She  can  help  to 
bring  home  to  the  mind  things  which,  though 


60        WILL  SCIENCE  PUT  OUT  POETRY? 

true,  are  yet  strange,  distant,  perhaps  distasteful. 
She  can  mediate  between  the  warm,  household 
feelings  and  the  cold  and  remote  acquisitions  of 
new  knowledge,  and  make  the  heart  feel  no 
longer  "bewildered  and  oppressed"  among  the 
vast  extent  and  gigantic  movements  of  the  Uni- 
verse, but  at  home  amongst  them,  soothed  and 
tranquillized.  Not,  however,  out  of  her  own  re- 
sources alone  can  Imagination  do  this.  She  must 
bring  from  the  treasure-house  of  Religion  moral 
and  spiritual  lights  and  impulses,  and  with  these 
interpenetrate  the  cold,  boundless  spaces  which 
the  telescope  has  revealed.  Some  beginning  of 
such  a  reconciling  process  we  may  see  here  and 
there  in  those  poems  of  "In  Memoriam"  in 
which  the  Poet-Laureate  has  finely  inwrought 
new  truths  of  Science  into  the  texture  of  yearn- 
ing affection  and  spiritual  meditation.  Even 
where  the  views  of  Science  are  not  only  strange, 
but  even  at  first  crude  and  repulsive,  Imagination 
can  soften  their  asperity  and  subdue  their  harsher 
features.  Just  as  when  a  railway  has  been  driven 
through  some  beautiful  and  sequestered  scene, 
outraging  its  quiet  and  scarring  its  loveliness, 
we  see  Nature  in  time  return,  and  "  busy  with  a 
hand  of  healing,"  cover  the  raw  wounds  with 
grass,  and  strew  artificial  mounds  and  cuttings 
with  underwood  and  flowers.  /  It  seems'then  that 
while  Science  gives  to  Poetry  new  regions  te 
work  upon,  Poetry  repays  the  debt  by  familiar 
izing  and  humanizing  what  Science  has  discov- 
ered, f  Such  is  their  mutual  interaction. 


WILL  SCIENCE  PUT  OUT  POETRY*        61 

Mr.  Stopford  Brooke  has  told  us  that  if  on  the 
scientific  insight  of  Faraday  could  be  engrafted 
the  poetic  genius  of  Byron,  the  result  would  be 
a  poem  of  the  kind  "  for  which  the  world  waits." 
For  "  to  write  on  the  universal  ideas  of  Science," 
he  says,  "  through  the  emotions  which  they  ex- 
cite, will  be  part  of  the  work  of  future  poets 
of  Nature."  Likely  enough  it  may  be  so.  For 
if  Poetry  were, to  leave  large  regions  of  new 
thought  unappropriated,  being  thus  divorced  from 
the  onward  march  of  thought,  it  would  speed- 
ily become  obsolete  and  unreal.  But  let  us  well 
understand  what'  &re  the  conditions  of  such  po- 
etry, the  conditions  on  which  alone  Imagina- 
tion can  wed  itself  to  scientific  fact.  The  poet 
who  shall  sing  the  songs  of  Science  must  first  be 
perfectly  at  home  in  all  the  new  truths,  must 
move  among  them  with  as  much  ease  and  free- 
dom as  ordinary  men  now  do  among  the  natural 
appearances  of  things.  And  not  the  poet  only, 
but  his  audience  must  move  with  ease  along  the 
pathways  which  Science  has  opened.  For  if  the 
poet  has  first  to  instruct  his  readers  in  the  facts 
which  he  wishes  imaginatively  to  render,  while 
lie  expounds  he  will  become  frigid  and  unpo- 
etic.  Just  as  Lucretius  is  dull  in  those  parts 
of  his  poem  in  which  hfe  has  to  argue  out  and  to 
expound  the  Atomic  Theory,  and  only  then  soars 
when,  exposition  left  behind,  he  can  give  himself 
up  to  contemplate  tha  great  elemental  move- 
ments, the  vast  life  that  pervades  the  sum  of 


62        WILL  SCIENCE  PUT  OUT  POETRY f 

things.  For  in  order  that  any  truth  or  view  of 
things  may  become  fit  material  for  poetry,  it  must 
first  cease  to  live  exclusively  in  the  study  or  the 
laboratory,  and  come  down  and  make  itself  pal- 
pable in  the  market-place.  The  scientific  truths 
must  be  no  longer  strange,  remote,  or  technical. 
If  they  have  not  yet  passed  into  popular  thought, 
they  must  at  least  have  become  the  habitual  pos- 
session of  the  more  educated  before  the  poet  can 
successfully  deal  with  them.  This  is  the  neces- 
sary condition  of  their  poetic  treatment.  Words- 
worth, in  one  of  his  Prefaces,  has  stated  so 
clearly  the  truth  on  this  subject  that  I  cannot  do 
better  than  give  his  words.  "  If  the  time  should 
ever  come,"  he  says,  "  when  what  is  now  called 
Science  becomes  familiarized  to  men,  then  the 
remotest  discoveries  of  the  chemist,  the  botanist, 
the  mineralogist,  will  be  as  proper  objects  of  the 
poet's  art  as  any  upon  which  it  can  be  employed. 
He  will  be  ready  to  follow  the  steps  of  the  man 
of  science,  he  will  be  at  his  side,  carrying  sensa- 
tion into  the  midst  of  the  objects  of  Science  it- 
self. The  poet  will  lend  his  divine  spirit  to  aid 
the  transfiguration,  and  will  welcome  the  being 
thus  produced  as  a  dear  and  genuine  inmate  of 
the  household  of  man." 

Science  therefore  may  in  some  measure  modify 
Poetry,  may  enlarge  its  range,  may  reveal  new 
phases  of  it,  but  can  never  supersede  it.|  The 
imaginative  view  of  things  which  Poetry  ex* 
presses  is  not  one  which  can  grow  obsolete.  It 


WILL  SCIENCE  PUT  OUT  POETRY?        63 

is  not  the  child  of  any  one  particular  stage  of 
knowledge  or  civilization,  which  can  be  put  aside 
when  a  higher  stage  has  been  reached.  Any 
state  of  knowledge  can  give  scope  to  it.  Any  as- 
pect of  the  world,  that  seen  by  the  savage  as  well 
as  that  of  the  sage,  can  awaken  that  imaginative 
glow  of  mind,  that  thrill  of  emotion,  which,  ex- 
pressed in  fitting  words,  is  called  Poetry.  Only, 
as  has  been  said  above,  before  any  aspect  of 
nature,  or  fact  of  life,  or  truth  of  science,  may 
be  capable  of  poetic  treatment,  it  must  have  be- 
come habitual  and  easy  to  the  mind  of  the  poet, 
and  in  some  measure  to  that  of  his  audience, 
In  the  poet's  mind,  at  least,  it  must  have  passed 
out  of  the  region  of  mere  head-notions  into  the 
warmer  atmosphere  of  imaginative  intuition,  and, 
vitalized  there,  must  have  bodied  itself  into  oeau- 
tiful  form  and  flushed  into  glowing  color.  For, 
to  repeat  once,  again  what  has  been  said  at  the 
outset,  Poetry  originates  in  the  vivid  contact  of 
the  soul  —  not-  of  the  understanding  merely,  but 
of  the  whole. soul  —  with  reality  of  any  kind; 
and  it  is  the  utterance  of  the  joy  that  arises,  of 
the  glow  that  is^felt,  from  such  soul-contact  with 
the  reality  of  things.  When  that  reality  has  A 
passed  inward/and  kindled  the  soul  to  "a  white  \ 
heat  of  emotion,"  then  it  is  that  genuine -Poetry 
is  born. 


CHAPTER  V. 

HOW  FAB  SCIENCE  MAY  MODIFY  POETBY. 

IT  may  be  worth  while  to  dwell  a  little  longer 
on  the  way  in  which  Poetry  and  Science  respect- 
ively deal  with  external  Nature,  noticing  in  what 
respects  their  methods  agree,  in  what  they  differ, 
wherein  they  seem  to  modify  each  other,  and  how 
each  aims  at  a  separate  and  distinct  end  of  its 
own. 

The  first  thing  to  remark  is,  that  in  the  pres- 
ence of  Nature  the  poet  and  the  man  of  science 
are  alike  observers.  But  in  respect  of  time  the 
poet  has  the  precedence.  Long  before  the  botan- 
ist had  applied  his  microscope  to  the  flower,  or 
the  geologist  his  hammer  to  the  rock,  the  poet's 
eye  had  rested  upon  these  objects,  and  noted  the 
beauty  of  their  lineaments.  The  poets  were  the 
first  observers,  and  the  earliest  and  greatest  poets 
were  the  most  exact  and  faithful  in  their  observa- 
tions. In  the  Psalms  of  Israel  and  in  the  Poems 
of  Homer  how  many  of  the  most  beautiful  and 
affecting  images  of  Nature  have  been  seized  and 
embalmed  in  language  which  for  exactness  can 
not  be  surpassed,  and  for  beauty  can  never  grow 
obsolete !  Indeed,  fidelity  to  the  truth  of  Nat- 


HO  W  FAR  SCIENCE  MAY  MODIFY  POETRY.   65 

ure,  even  in  its  minutest  details,  may  be  almost 
taken  as  a  special  note  of  the  higher  order  of 
poets.  It  is  not  Homer  but  Dryden  who  to  ex- 
press the  silence  of  night  makes  the  drowsy 
mountains  nod.  It  is  a  vulgar  error  which  sup- 
poses that  it  is  the  privilege  of  imagination  to 
absolve  the  poet  from  the  duty  of  exact  truth, 
and  to  set  him  free  to  make  of  Nature  what  he 
pleases.  True  imagination  shows  itself  by  noth- 
ing more  than  by  that  exquisite  sensibility  to 
beauty  which  makes  it  love  and  reverence  Nature 
as  it  is.  It  feels  instinctively  that  "  He  hath 
made  everything  beautiful  in  his  time ;  "  there- 
fore it  would  not  displace  a  blade  of  grass  nor 
neglect  the  veining  of  a  single  leaf.  Of  course, 
from  the  touch  of  a  great  poet,  the  commonest 
objects  acquire  something  more  than  exactness 
and  truth  of  detail ;  they  become  forms  of  beauty, 
vehicles  of  human  sentiment  and  emotion.  But 
before  they  can  be  so  used,  fidelity  to  fact  must 
first  be  secured.  T*hey  cannot  be  made  symbols 
of  higher  truth  unless  justice  has  first  been  done 
to  the  truth  of  fact  concerning  them.  Hence  it 
is  that  the  works  of  the  great  poets  of  all  ages 
are  very  repositories  in  which  the  features  and 
ever-changing  aspects  of  the  outward  world  are 
rendered  with  the  most  loving  fidelity  and  "  vivid 
exactness/'  This  is  one  very  delicate  service 
which  genuine  poets  have  done  to  their  fellow- 
men.  They  have  by  an  instinct  of  their  own 
noted  the  appearance  of  earth  and  sky,  and  kept 


66  BOW  FAR  SCIENCE  MAY  MODIFY  POETRY. 

alive  the  sense  of  their  beauty  during  long  ages 
when  the  world  was  little  heedful  of  these  things. 
How  many  are  there  who  would  own  that  there 
are  features  in  the  landscape,  wild-flowers  by  the 
way-side,  tender  lights  in  the  sky,  which  they 
would  have  passed  forever  unheeded,  had  not 
the  remembered  words  of  some  poet  awakened 
their  eye  to  look  on  these  things  and  to  discern 
their  beauty  !  Who  ever  now  sees  the  "  wee, 
modest,  crimson-tipped  flower,"  and  notes  the 
peculiar  coloring  of  the  petals,  without  a  new 
feeling  of  beauty  in  the  flower  itself,  and  of  the 
added  beauty  it  has  received  since  the  eye  of 
Burns  dwelt  so  lovingly  upon  it  ! 

The  observation  of  the  world  around  them  in 
those  early  poets,  clear  and  transparent,  was 
instinctive,  almost  unconscious.  It  proceeded 
not  by  rules  or  method,  but  was  spontaneous, 
prompted  by  love.  What  Mrs.  Hemans  finely 
says  of  Walter  Scott  among  his  own  woods  at 
Abbotsford,  may  be  said  of  all  the  great  poets  in 
their  converse  with  Nature  — 

"  Where  every  tree  had  music  of  its  own, 
To  his  quick  ear  of  knowledge  taught  by  love." 

Likely  enough  it  will  be  said,  that  spontaneous, 
childlike  kind  of  observation  was  all  well  enough 
in  the  pre-scientific  era.  But  now,  in  this  day  of 
trained  observation  and  experiment,  have  not  the 
magnifying-glass  of  the  botanist  and  the  crucible 
of  the  chemist  quite  put  out  the  poet's  vocation 
at  an  observer  of  natural  things  ?  Have  not 


HOW  FAR  SCIENCE  MAY  MODIFY  POETRY.  67 

these  taught  us  truth  about  Nature,  so  much 
more  close,  exact,  and  penetrating,  as  to  have  dis- 
credited altogether  that  mere  surface  observation 
which  is  all  that  is  possible  to  the  poet  ?  In  the 
presence  of  this  newer,  more  sifting  investigation, 
can  the  imagery  of  the  poets  any  longer  live? 
Has  not  the  rigorous  analysis  of  modern  times, 
and  the  knowledge  thence  accruing,  abolished 
the  worth  and  meaning  of  that  first  random  in- 
formation gathered  by  the  eye  ? 

In  reply,  may  it  not  be  said  the  observations 
of  the  poet  have  real  meaning  and  truth,  but  it 
is  a  different  kind  of  truth  which  the  poet  and 
the  man  of  science  extract  from  the  same  object  ? 
^The  poet,  in  as  far  as  he  is  an  observer  at  all, 
must  be  as  true  and  as  accurate  in  the  details  he 
gives  as  the  man  of  science  is,  but  the  end  which 
each  seeks  in  his  observation  is  different.  In  ex- 
amining a  flower,  the  botanist,  when  he  has 
noted  the  number  of  stamens  and  petals,  the 
form  of  the  pistil,  the  corolla,  the  calyx,  and 
other  floral  organs,  —  when  he  has  registered 
these,  and  so  given  the  flower  its  place  in  his  sys- 
tem, his  work  is  done.  These  things,  too,  the 
poet  observes,  and  in  his  descriptions,  if  he  does 
not  give  them  a  place,  he  must  at  least  not  con- 
travene them ;  but  he  observes  them  as  means  to 
a  further  end.  That  end  is  to  see  and  express 
the  loveliness  that  is  in  the  flower,  not  only  the 
beauty  of  color  and  of  form,  but  the  sentiment 
which,  so  to  speak,  looks  out  from  it,  and  which 


68  HOW  FAR  SCIENCE  MAY  MODIFY  POETRY. 

is  meant  to  awaken  in  us  an  answering  emotion. 
For  this  end  he  must  observe  accurately,  since 
the  form  and  hues  of  the  flower  discerned  by  the 
eye  are  a  large  part  of  what  gives  it  relation  and 
meaning  to  the  soul.  The  outward  facts  of  the 
wild-flowers  he  must  not  distort,  but  reverently 
observe  them ;  but,  when  observed,  he  must  not 
rest  in  them,  but  see  them  as  they  stand  related 
to  the  earth  out  of  which  they  grow,  to  the  wood 
which  surrounds  them,  to  the  sky  above  them, 
which  waits  on  them  with  its  ministries  of  dew. 
rain,  and  sunshine,  —  indeed,  to  the  whole  world, 
of  which  they  are  a  part,  and  to  the  human  heart, 
.to  which  they  tenderly  appeaU- 
,  On  this  wide  subject,  the  bearing  of  scientific 
on  poetic  truth,  I  know  not  where  can  be  found 
truer  and  more  suggestive  teaching  than  that  con- 
tained in  Mr.  Ruskin's  great  work  on  Modern 
Painters.  Each  volume  of  that  work,  which  has 
influenced  so  powerfully  the  painting  of  our  time, 
has  much  to  teach  to  the  poet  and  to  the  student 
of  Poetry.  In  the  Preface  to  the  Second  Edition 
many  of  the  principles  expanded  throughout  the 
work  are  condensed.  From  that  Preface  I  vent- 
ure to  .quote  one  or  two  passages  which  throw 
much  light  on  the  subject  of  our  discussion  :  — 

"  The  sculptor  is  not  permitted  to  be  wanting 
either  in  knowledge  or  expression  of  anatomical 

detail That  which  to  the  anatomist  is  the 

end  is  to  the  sculptor  the  means.     The  former 
desires  details  for  their  own  sake ;  the  latter 


HOW  FAR  SCIENCE  MAY  MODIFY  POETRY.  69 

fchat  by  means  of  them  he  may  kindle  his  work 
with  life,  and  stamp  it  with  beauty.  And  so  in 
landscape  :  botanical  or  geological  details  are  not 
to  be  given  as  a  matter  of  curiosity  or  subject  of 
search,  but  as  the  ultimate  elements  of  every 
species  of  expression  and  order  of  loveliness." 

Again :  "  Details  alone,  and  unref erred  to  a 

final  purpose,  are  the  sign  of  a  tyro's  work 

Details  perfect  in  unity  and  contributing  to  a 
final  purpose  are  the  sign  of  the  production  of  a 
consummate  master.  It  is  not  details  sought  for 
their  own  sake  ....  which  constitute  great  art, 
—  they  are  the  lowest,  most  contemptible  art; 
but  it  is  detail  referred  to  a  great  end,  sought  for 
the  sake  of  the  inestimable  beauty  which  exists 
in  the  slightest  and  least  of  God's  works,  and 
treated  in  a  manly,  broad,  and  impressive  manner. 
There  may  be  as  much  greatness  of  mind,  as 
much  nobility  of  manner,  in  a  master's  treatment 
of  the  smallest  features,  as  in  his  management  of 
the'  more  vast;  and  this  greatness  of  manner 
chiefly  consists  in  seizing  the  specific  character  of 
the  object,  together  with  all  the  great  qualities 
^of  beauty  which  it  has  in  common  with  the  higher 
orders  of  existence." 

Once  more :  "  This  is  the  difference  between 
the  mere  botanist's  knowledge  of  plants  and  the 
great  poet's  or  painter's  knowledge  of  them.  The 
one  notes  their  distinctions  for  the  sake  of  swell- 
ing his  herbarium,  the  other  that  he  may  render 
them  vehicles  of  expression  and  emotion.  The 


70  HO W  FAR  SCIENCE  MAY  MODIFY  POETRY. 

one  counts  the  stamens,  affixes  a  name,  and  is 
content ;  the  other  observes  every  character  of 
the  plant's  color  and  form ;  considering  each  of 
its  attributes  as  an  element  of  expression,  he 
seizes  on  its  lines  of  grace  or  energy,  rigidity  or 
repose,  notes  the  feebleness  or  jbhe  vigor,  the  se- 
renity or  tremulousness  of  its  hues ;  observes  its 
local  habits,  its  love  or  fear  of  peculiar  places, 
its  nourishment  or  destruction  by  particular  in- 
fluences ;  he  associates  it  in  his  mind  with  all  the 
features  of  the  situations  it  inhabits  and  the  min- 
istering agencies  necessary  to  its  support.  Thence- 
forward the  flower  is  to  him  a  living  creature, 
with  histories  written  on  its  leaves  and  passions 
breathing  in  its  motion.  Its  occurrence  in  his 
picture  is  no  mere  point  of  color,  no  meaningless 
spark  of  light.  It  is  a  voice  rising  from  the 
earth,  a  new  chord  of  the  mind's  music,  a  neces- 
sary note  in  the  harmony  of  his  picture,  contrib- 
uting alike  to  its  tenderness  and  its  dignity,  nor 
less  to  its  loveliness  and  its  truth." 

If  in  the  observation  of  Nature  the  ends  which 
the  poet  has  in  view  and  the  effects  which  he 
brings  out  are  different  from  those  aimed  at  by 
the  man  of  science,  not  less  distinct  are  the  men- 
tal powers  "which  each  brings  into  play.  The 
man  of  science  investigates  that  he  may  reach 
rigid  accuracy  of  fact,  and  this  he  does  by  the 
exercise  of  the  dry  understanding,  and  by  the  use 
of  the  analytic  jnetbod.  The  poet  contemplates 
the  single  objects  .or  the  vast  spectacle  of  Nature, 


HOW  FAR  SCIENCE  MAY  MODIFY  POETRY.   71 

in  order  that  he  may  discern  the  beauty  that  per- 
vades both  the  parts  and  the  whole,  and  that 
he  may  apprehend  the  intimations  —  the  great 
thoughts,  I  might  call  them — which  come  to  him 
through  that  beauty,  and  which  make  their 
appeal  to  the  power  of  imaginative  sympathy 
within  him.  Nature,  whether  in  detail  or  as  a 
whole,  he  regards  in  the  relation  it  bears,  whether 
of  likeness  or  of  contrast,  to  the  soul,  the  emo- 
tions, and  the  destiny  of  man.  But  this  relation 
he  must  seize,  not  by  neglecting  or  setting  aside 
facts,  but  by  noting  them  with  all  the  fidelity 
consistent  with  his  main  purpose. 

But  it  may  be  well  to  mark  more  definitely 
some  of  the  ways  in  which  the  extension  of  nat- 
ural science  in  modern  times  has  reacted  on  the 
work  of  the  poet. 

1st.  It  Jhag  fallen  Jn  with,  though  it  has  not 
originated,  that  remarkable  change  in  the  mental 
attitude  in  which  modern  times  stand  toward 
Nature,  a  change  of  which  more  will  have  to  be 
said  presently,  but  which  it  is  enough  here  to 
allude  to.  For  that  ardent,  sensitive,  reverent 
regard  which  the  modern  timo  turns  on  Nature, 
recent  research  may  be' said  to  have  furnished  a 
ratioixal  basis,  a  sufficient  justification.  Not  that 
Science  created  this  mental  attitude,  this  new- 
born sentiment ;  it  is  due  to  other,  more  subtle 
and  hidden  causes.  Indeed,  it  may  be  that  the 
two  great  contemporanepus  influences,  the  in- 
creased activity  of  physical  discovery  working  by 


72   HO  W  FAR  SCIENCE  MAY  MODIFY  POETRY. 

scientific  analysis,  and  the  enlarged  and  height- 
ened admiration  of  Nature  as  seen  through  the 
imagination,  are  but  opposite  sides  of  the  one 
great  cur^ejjLt_o£jnoderHr-tho«ghts--  Shelley  speaks 
of  the  "intense  and  comprehensive  imagery  which 
distinguishes  the  modern  literature  of  England," 
and  this,  though  by  no  means  a  product  of  phys* 
ical  science,  is  in  keeping  with  its  revelations, 
though  it  goes  beyond  and  supplements  them. 

2d.  Again :  the  greatest  of  the  early  poets,  as 
we  have  seen,  were  instinctive  lovers  of  Nature, 
and  faithful  delineators  of  its  forms.  But  in 
presence  of  the  unresting  scrutiny  and  careful 
exactness  of  Science,  modern  poets  are  stimulated 
to  still  closer,  more  minute  observation.  Indeed, 
there  may  be  dangey  lest  this  tendency  in  Poetry 
go  too  far,  and  make  it  too  microscopic  and  for- 
getful of  that  .higher  function  which,  while  seeing 
truly,  ever  spiritualizes  what  it  sees.  However 
this  may  be,  it  is  clear  that  Science  by  its  con- 
tagion has  stimulated  the  observing  powers  of 
the  modern  poet,  and  made  him  more  than  ever 
a  heedful 

"  Watcher  of  those  still  reports 
Which  Nature  utters  from  her  rural  shrine." 

3d.  Again :  since  the  progress  of  modern  Sci- 
ence has  let  in  on  the  mental  vision  whole  worlds 
of  new  facts, and  new  forces,  —  a  height  and  a 
depth,  a  vastnesa  and  minuteness  in  Nature,  as 
fihe  works  all  aroujid  us,  alike  in  ,the  smallest 
pebble  on  the  shore,  and  "  in  the  loftiest  star  oJ 


HOW  FAR  SCIENCE  MAY  MODIFY  POETRY.  73 

unascended  heaven,"  —  it  cannot  be  but  that  all 
this  now  familiar  knowledge  should  enter  into 
the  sympathetic  soul  of  the  poet,  and  color  his 
eye  as  he  looks  abroad  on  Nature.  When  the 
eye,  for  instance,  from  the  southern  beach  of  the 
Moray  Firth  passes  over  to  its  northern  shore, 
and  rests  on  the  succession  of  high  plateaux  and 
precipiced  promontories  which  form*  the  opposite 
coast,  and  observes  how  the  whole  landscape  has 
been  shaped,  moulded,  and  rounded  into  its  pres- 
ent uniformity  of  feature  by  the  glaciers  that 
untold  ages  since  descended  from  Ben  Wyvis  and 
his  neighboring  altitudes,  and  wore  and  ground 
the  masses  of  old  red  sandstone  into  the  outlines 
of  the  bluffs  he  now  sees,  —  who  can  look  on 
such  a  spectacle  without  having  new  thoughts 
awakened  within  him,  of  Nature  working  with 
her  primeval  wedges  of  frost,  ice,  and  flood,  to 
carve  the  solid  rock  into  the  lineaments  before 
him,  and  of  the  still  higher  power  behind  Nature 
that  directs  and  controls  all  these  her  movements 
to  ulterior  and  sublimer  ends !  When,  in  addi- 
tion to  these  thoughts,  the  gazer  calls  to  mind 
that  these  are  the  native  headlands  which  first 
arrested  the  meditative  eye  of  the  great  northern 
mason,  more  than  any  other,  geologist  and  poet 
in  one,  and  fed  the  fire  of  his  young  enthusiasm, 
does  not  the  geologic  charactery  that  is  scrawled 
upon  these  rocks  receive  a  strange  enhancement 
of  human  interest  ? 

Again  :  the  huge  gray  bowlders,  strewn  here 


74  HOW  FAR  SCIENCE  MAY  MODIFY  POETRY. 

and  there  on  the  top  of  those  promontories,  and 
all  about  the  dusky  moors,  when  we  learn  that 
they  have  been  floated  to  their  present  stations 
from  leagues  away  by  long  vanished  glaciers,  no 
doubt  their  gaunt  shapes  become  wonderfully 
suggestive  And  yet,  perhaps,  nothing  that  geol- 
ogy can  teach  regarding  them  will  ever  invest 
them  with  a  more  imaginative  aspect  than  that 
which  they  wore  to  the  poet's  eye,  when,  caring 
little  enough  for  scientific  theories,  it  shaped 
them  into  this  human  phantasy  — 

"  As  a  huge  stone  is  sometimes  seen  to  lie 
Couched  on  the  bald  top  of  an  eminence ; 
Wonder  to  all  who  do  the  same  espy 
By  what  means  it  hath  hither  come,  and  whence ; 
So  that  it  seems  a  thing  endued  with  sense ; 
Like  a  sea-beast  crawled  forth,  that  on  a  shelf 
Of  rock  or  sand  reposeth,  there  to  sun  itself." 

But  no  doubt  the  truths  of  geology,  if  known 
to  a  poet,  will  in  some  measure  enter  into  his 
description  of  scenery.  For  as  the  geological 
structure  of  a  country  powerfully  moulds  and 
determines  its  features,  the  knowledge  of  this,  if 
possessed,  must  enter  into  the  poet's  eye  as  it 
ranges  over  the  landscape.  How  powerfully  geo- 
logical causes  are  to  modify  scenery  is  well  set 
forth  in  a  passage  of  the  same  Preface  of  Mr. 
Ruskin's  from  which  I  have  already  quoted. 

The  new  light  which  the  discovery  of  these 
faxjts  throws  upon  scenery  cannot  now  well  be 
neglected  by  the  poet.  And  it  is  impossible  to 
divine  how  many  new  facts  and  farther  vistas 


HOW  FAR  SCIENCE  MAY  MODIFY  POETRY.  75 

into  the  recesses  of  Nature  future  discovery  may 
open  up,  which,  when  they  have  passed,  into  the 
educated  mind,  poets  must  in  their  own  way  find 
expression  for.  But  one  thing  is  clear,  the  poet, 
however  he  may  avail  himself  of  scientific  truth, 
must  not  himself  merge  the  Poet  in  the  investi- 
gator or  analyst.  That  function  he  must  leave 
to  the  physicist,  and  be  content  to  employ  the 
material  with  which  the  physicist  furnishes  him 
to  enrich  and  enlarge  his  vision  of  beauty.  More- 
over, the  scientific  facts  he  uses  must  not  be 
those  which  are  still  abstruse  and  difficult,  but 
those  with  which  educated  men  at  least  have 
already  become  familiar.  But,  above  all,  the 
poet,  if  he  is  not  to  abdicate  his  function,  must 
retain  that  freshness  of  eye,  that  childlikeness  of 
heart,  which  looks  forth  with  ever-young  delight 
and  wonder  and  awe  on  the  great  spectacle  which 
Nature  spreads  before  him.  Most  men  have  lost 
this  gift,  their  spirits  being  crushed  beneath  the 
dead  weight  of  custom.  Our  boasted  civilization 
and  education  have  done  their  best  to  destroy  it ; 
so  that  now  it  has  come  about  that  to  the  dull 
mechanic  mind  this  marvelous  earth  is  bat  a 
black  ball  of  mud,  painted  here  and  there  with 
ftome  streaks  of  green  and  gold.  To  the  drily 
scientific  mind,  which  fancies  itself  educated,  it 
is  merely  a  huge  piece  of  mechanism,  like  some 
great  mill  or  factory,  worked  by  forces  which  he 
proudly  tabulates  and  calls  Laws  of  Nature.  But 
to  the  true  poet  the  earth  and  sky  have  not  yet 


76  HOW  FAR  SCIENCE  MAY  MODIFY  POETRY. 

lost  all  their  original  brightness.  His  eye  still 
sees  them  with  the  dew  upon  them,  in  inspired 
moments  still  catches  sight  of  the  visionary  gleam. 
His  gift  it  is,  his  peculiar  function,  seeing  this 
himself,  to  make  others  see  and  feel  it,  to  make 
his  fellow-men  sharers  in  his  perceptions  and  in 
the  joy  they  bring.  He  purges  our  dulled  eye? 
as  with  euphrasy  and  rue,  and  opens  them  to 
partake  of  the  vision  which  he  himself  beholds. 
For  after  all  the  sciences  have  said  their  say,  and 
propounded  their  explanations  of  things,  as  far 
as  they  go,  the  poet  feels  that  there  is  in  this 
visible  Universe,  and  the  spectacle  it  presents, 
something  more  than  all  the  sciences  have  as  yet 
grasped  or  ever  will  grasp  —  feels  that  there  is  in 
and  through  and  behind  all  Nature  a  mysterious 
life,  which  he  "  cannot  compass,  cannot  utter," 
but  which  he  must  still  bear  witness  to.  This 
great  truth  which  lay  at  the  bottom  of  the  old 
mythologies,  which  gives  meaning  to  many  forms 
of  mysticism,  but  which  our  dull  mechanic  phi- 
losophies have  long  discredited,  still  haunts  the 
soul  of  the  poet,  and,  feeling  it  profoundly  him- 
self, he  longs  to  express  and  make  others  feel  it. 


CHAPTER   VI. 
THE  MYSTICAL   SIDE  OF  NATURE. 

4th.  THE  mystical  feeling  which  the  contem- 
plation of  Nature  has  awakened  in  poets  of  every 
age,  but  which  our  own  day  has  so  greatly  ex- 
panded, while  it  is  not  directly  suggested  by 
Science,  yet  finds  support  from  its  disclosures. 
That  great  spectacle  which  from  earliest  a'gea 
has  thrilled  the  poet's  soul  with  rapture  and  awe 
we  know  now  to  be  produced  by  recognized  laws, 
to  be  interpenetrated  by  numberless  well-ordered 
forces,  whichs  are  indeed  but  thought  localized, 
reason  made  visible.  The  intuitive  wonder  which 
the  earliest  poet  felt  is  more  than  justified  by  the 
latest  discoveries  of  Science. 

And  yet,  be  it  observed,  whatever  support  the 
truths  of  Science  may  give  to  the  poet's  instinct- 
ive perceptions,  it ,  is  not  on  the  physical  causes 
and  operations  revealed  by  Science  that  his  eye 
chiefly  dwells.  He  has  an  object  of  contempla- 
tion which  is  distinct  from  these  and  peculiar  to 
himself,  and  that  is  the  Beauty  which  he  sees  in 
the  face  of  the  Universe.  Over  and  above  the 
physical  laws  which  uphold  and  carry  on  this 
iramework  of  things,  beyond  all  the  uses  which 


78         THE  MYSTICAL  SIDE  OF  NATURE. 

this  mechanism  subserves,  there  is  this  further 
fact,  this  additional  result,  that  all  these  laws  and 
forces  in  their  combination  issue  in  Beauty.  This 
Beauty,  while  it  is  created  by  the  collocation  and 
harmonious  working  of  the  physical  laws,  is  a 
thing  distinct  from  them  and  their  operation.  It- 
is  an  aspect  of  things  with  which  the  physicist 
as  such  does  not  intermeddle,  but  it  is  as  real  and 
as  powerful  over  the  minds  of  men  as  any  force 
which  Science  has  disclosed.  Modern  discovery 
may  have  enlarged  and  intensified  it,  but  has  in 
no  way  originated  it.  In  this  Beauty  the  poet 
from  the  first  has  found  his  favorite  field,  the 
main  region  of  his  energy.  For  ages  the  vision 
of  this  beauty  has  haunted,  riveted,  fascinated 
him.  And  if  he  is  no  longer  as  of  old  its  sole 
guardian,  he  is  still,  whether  speaking  through 
verse  or  prose,  its  best  and  truest  interpreter. 
This  truth,  that  the  Beauty  of  Nature  is  some- 
thing in  thought  distinct,  though  in  fact  insep- 
arable from  the  machinery  of  Nature,  has  been 
brought  out  and  dwelt  on  with  remarkable  power 
by  Canon  Mozley  in  his  most  suggestive  sermon 
on  "  Nature."  And  he  further  insists  with  great 
force  on  the  truth  that  it  is  this  spectacle  of 
beauty  produced  by  the  useful  laws  which  is  the 
special  province  of  the  poet :  — 

"  He  fixes  his  eye  upon  the  passive  spectacle, 
upon  Nature  as  an  appearance,  a  sight,  a  picture. 
To  another  he  leaves  the  search  and  analysis  ;  he 
is  aoiitent  to  look,  and  to  look  only;  this,  and 


THE  MYSTICAL  SIDE  OF  NATURE.         79 

this  alone,  satisfies  him ;  lie  stands  like  a  watcher 
or  sentinel,  gazing  on  earth,  sea,  and  sky,  upon 
the  vast  assembled  imagery,  upon  the  rich  ma- 
jestic representation  on  the  canvas."  l 

It  is  then  the  spectacle  of  beauty  produced  by 
the  combination  of  physical  laws,  this  beauty, 
and  not  the  physical  laws  which  produce  it,  on 
which  the  poet  fixes  his  gaze.  In  the  presence  of 
it  the  poet's  first  mental  attitude  is  one  of  pure 
receptivity.  As  the  clear  windless  lake,  spread 
out  on  a  still  autumn  day,  takes  into  its  steady 
bosom  every  feature  of  the  surrounding  mount- 
ains, every  hue  of  the  overhanging  sky,  so  is  his 
soul  spread  out  to  receive  into  itself  the  whole 
imagery  of  Nature.  When  this  wise  passiveness 
has  been  undergone,  what  images,  sentiments, 
thoughts  the  poet  will  give  back  depends  on  the 
capaciousness,  the  depth,  the  clearness  of  soul 
within  him.  The  highest  poetry  of  Nature  is 
that  which  receives  most  inspiration  from  the 
spectacle,  which  extracts  out  of  it  th^  largftsi; 
number  of_great  and  true  thoughts.  And  a 
thougEt  or  idea,  as  Mr.  Ruskin  has  taught  us, 
"is  great  in  proportion  as  it  is  received  by  a 
higher  faculty  of  the  mind,  and  as  it  more  fully 
occupies  and,  in  occupying,  exercises  and  exalts 
the  faculty  by  which  it  is  received." 

There  are  no  doubt  poets  who  are  mainly  taken 
up  with  the  forms  and  colors  of  things,  and  yet 
no  poet  can  rest  wholly  in  them,  for  this,  if  for 
1  Mozley's  University  Sermons,  p.  141. 


80         THE  MYSTICAL  SIDE  OF  NATURE. 

no  other  reason,  that  in  the  power  of  rendering 
them  his  art  necessarily  falls  so  far  below  that  of 
the  painter.  Even  those  poets  who  deal  most 
/  humbly  with  Nature  must,  when  they  endeavor 
to  make  us  feel  its  visible  beauty,  link  the  out- 
ward forms  and  colors  to  some  simple  thoughts 
of  animal  delight,  or  of  comfort,  or  of  childhood, 
or  of  home  affection.  This  much  he  must  do,  if 
only  to  make  them  vivid,  to  bring  them  home  to' 
us.  But  he  who  does  not  go  beyond  this  has  not 
attained  to  those  higher  secrets  of  Nature,  which 
are  open  to  the  meditative  imagination.  When 
a  reflective  man  comes  on  some  sudden  beauty  of 
scenery  in  the  wilderness  where  no  man  is,  how 
often  has  the  thought  arisen  that  all  this  beauty 
cannot  be  wasted  on  vacancy,  that  though  man 
comes  not  that  way  to  see  it,  there  must  be  other 
eyes  that  behold  the  spectacle,  —  one  Eye  at  least 
by  which  it  is  not  unseen. 

Whether  we  regard  the  beauty  as  something 
wholly  external  to  us,  as  lying  outside  of  us  on 
the  face  of  Nature,  or  as  a  creation  resulting  from 
the  combination  of  certain  external  qualities,  and 
of  an  intelligent  mind  which  perceives  them, 
whichever  of  these  views  we  take,  the  beauty  is 
there,  no  mere  dream  or  phantasy,  but  something 
to  whose  existence  the  soul  witnesses,  as  truly  as 
the  eye  does  to  the  existence  of  light  or  of  those 
motions  which  perceived  are  light.  What  is  it, 
whence  comes  it,  what  means  it  ?  It  is  not  some- 
thing we  can  reason  from  as  we  can  from  marks 


THE  MYSTICAL  SIDE  OF  NATURE.         81 

of  contrivance  and  design.  It  will  not  lend 
itself  to  any  syllogism.  But  notwithstanding 
this,  or  perhaps  owing  to  this,  it  awakens  deeper 
thoughts,  it  carries  the  mind  farther  than  any 
mere  proofs  of  design  can  do.  The  beautiful 
aspect  of  the  outward  world,  and  the  delight 
which  it  inspires,  are  no  doubt  proofs  of  a  good- 
ness somewhere  which  supports  these,  just  as  food 
and  air  are  proofs  of  it.  But  they  are  more :  they 
have  a  mystic  meaning,  they  are  hints  and  inti- 
mations of  something  more  than  eye,  or  ear,  or 
mere  intellect  discover.  If  the*  outward  world 
and  the  mind  of  man  are  so  constructed  that  they 
fall  in  with,  and  answer  to,  each  other,  —  if  mere 
physical  qualities,  such  as  height,  depth,  expan- 
sion, silence,  solitude,  sunshine,  shadow,  gloom, 
affect  the  soul  in  certain  well-known  ways,  awak- 
ening in  us  emotions  of  awe  and  wonder,  of 
peace,  gladness,  sadness,  and  solemnity,  —  we 
naturally  ask  ourselves,  after  being  thus  moved, 
why  is  it  we  were  so  affected,  what  is  it  in  the 
outward  world  which  awakens  these  emotions? 
It  is  a  natural  question  for  those  who  have  felt 
the  strange  impulses  from  the  changeful  counte- 
nance of  the  world.  It  was  not  mere  shape  or 
color  that  so  affected  them:  these  feelings  did 
not  com6  by  chance,  they  were  not  without 
meaning ;  they  point  to  something  outside  of 
themselves,  something  inherent  in  the  truth  of 
things.  When  the  spirit  within  them  was  so 
stirred,  they  felt  that  that  which  so  addressed 


82        THE  MYSTICAL  SIDE  OF  NATURE. 

them,  though  it  came  through  physical  things,  was 
more  than  physical,  was  spiritual.  For  it  carried 
their  thoughts  and  feelings  quite  out  of  the  natural 
and  physical  appearances,  till  they  found  them- 
selves in  commune  with  something  akin  to  their 
own  spirits,  though  higher  and  vaster.  The  beauty 
which  came  to  them  through  eye,  ear,  and  im- 
agination, they  felt  to  belong  to  the  same  order 
as  that  which  more  directly  addresses  their  moral 
heart  and  conscience.  It  was  the  Great  Being 
behind  the  veil  who  comes  to  us  directly  through 
the  conscience,  "coming  more  indirectly,  but  not 
less  really,  through  the  eye  and  ear.  Not  other- 
wise can  we  account  for  the  intense  love  which 
the  sights  and  sounds  of  Nature  have  awakened 
in  the  best  and  purest  of  men,  and  the  more  so 
as  they  grew  in  maturity  and  serenity  of  soul. 

It  is  a  true  instinct  when  men  are  led  to  re- 
gard the  beauty  of  the  world  that  comes  to  them 
through  the  eye,  and  the  moral  light  which 
shines  from  behind  upon  the  soul,  as  coming 
from  one  centre,  and  leading  upward  to  the 
thought  of  one  Being  who  is  above  both.  In  this 
way  all  visible  beauty  becomes  a  hint  and  a  fore- 
shadowing of  something  more  than  itself.  But  if 
Nature  is  to  be  the  symbol  of  something  higher 
than  itself,  to  convey  intimations  of  Him  from 
whom  both  Nature  and  the  soul  proceed,  man 
must  come  to  the  spectacle  with  the  thought  of 
God  already  in  his  heart.  He  will  not  get  a  re- 
ligion out  of  the  mere  sight  of  Nature,  neither 


UNIVERSITY 

THE  MYSTICAL  SID^^AJ^KGBE.^  83 


from  the  uses  it  subserves  as  indicating  design, 
nor  from  the  beauty  it  manifests  as  hinting  at 
character.  Na  doubt  beauty  is  a  half-way  ele- 
ment, mediating  between  the  physical  laws  and 
the  moral  sentiments,  partaking  more  of  the  lat- 
ter than  of  the  former,  as  being  itself  a  spiritual 
perception.  No  doubt  it  does  in  some  measure 
act  as  a  reconciler  between  those  two  elements 
which  so  often  seem  to  stand  out  in  contrast  ir- 
reconcilable. But  if  it  is  to  do  this,  if  it  is  really 
to  lead  the  soul  upward,  man  must  come  to  the 
contemplation  of  it  with  his  moral  convictions 
clear  and  firm,  and  with  faith  in  these  as  connect- 
ing him  directly  with  God.  Neither  morality 
nor  religion  will  he  get  out  of  beauty  taken  by 
itself.  If  out  of  the  splendid  vision  spread  before 
him  —  the  sight  of  earth,  sea,  and  sky,  of  the 
clouds,  the  gleams,  the  shadows  —  man  could  ar- 
rive directly  at  the  knowledge  of  Him  who  is 
behind  them,  how  is  it  that  in  early  ages  whole 
nations,  with  these  sights  continually  before 
them,  never  reached  any  moral  conception  of 
God  ?  how  is  it  that  even  in  recent  times  many 
of  the  most  gifted  spirits,  who  have  been  most 
penetrated  by  that  vision,  and  have  given  it 
most  magnificent  expression,  have  been  in  revolt 
against  religious  faith  ?  It  is  because  they  sought 
in  Nature  alone,  that  which  alone  she  was  never 
intended  to  give.  It  is  because  the  spectacle  of 
;he  outward  world,  however  splendid,  if  we  be- 
gin with  it,  and  insist  OB  extracting  our  main 


84         THE  MYSTICAL  SIDE  OF  NATURE. 

light  from  it,  is  powerless  to  satisfy  our  human 
need,  to  speak  any  word  which  fits  in  to  man's 
moral  yearning.  Nay,  Nature  taken  alone  will 
often  appear  no  benign  mother  at  all,  no  dwell- 
ing-place of  a  kindly  spirit,  but  an  inexorable 
and  cruel  Sphinx,  who  rears  children  and  makes 
them  glad  a  little  while,  only  that  she  may  the 
more  relentlessly  destroy  them. 

But  he  who  takes  the  opposite  road,  who, 
instead  of  looking  to  visible  Nature  for  his  first 
teaching,  begins  with  the  knowledge  of  himself, 
of  his  need,  his  guilt,  his  helplessness,  and  listens 
to  the  voice  that  tells  of  a  strength  not  his  own, 
and  a  redemption  not  in  him  but  for  him,  he  will 
learn  to  Jook^  on  Nature  with  other  and  calmer 
eyes,  and  to  discern  a  meaning  in  it  which  taken 
by  itself  it  cannot  give.  Man  may  then  find  in 
the  beauty  which  he  sees  a  hint  and  intimation 
of  a  higher  beauty  which  he  does  not  see  —  a 
something  revealed  to  the  eye  which  corresponds 
to  the  religious  truth  revealed  to  the  heart,  har- 
monizing with  it  and  confirming  it.  He  can  re- 
gard the  glory  of  Nature,  not  only  in  itself  andj 
for  its  own  sake,  but  as  the  foreshadow  and 
prophecy  of  a  higher  glory  yet  to  be.  And  so' 

,  the  sight  of  Nature,  instead  of  intoxicating,  mad- 
dening, and  rousing  to  rebellion,  soothes,  ele- 
vates, spiritualizes,  chiming  in  unison  with  our 
best  thoughts,  our  purest  aspirations. 

<•  Canon  Mozley,  in  his  sermon  on  "  Nature " 
already  alluded  to,  has  dwelt  yery  powerfully  on 


THE  MYSTICAL  SIDE  OF  NATURE.        85 

this,  as  the  use  which  the  highest  Poetry  makes 
of  Nature,  and  has  shown  that  it  is  at  once  in. 
accordance  with  the  teaching  and  practice  of 
Scripture,  and  true  to  our  human  instincts.  He 
shows  how  sight,  the  noblest  of  our  senses  here, 
is  made  the  pattern  and  type  of  the  highest  atti- 
tude of  the  soul  hereafter.  For  heaven  is  repre- 
sented as  "  a  perfected  sight,"  and  he  who  attains 
to  it  is  to  be  a  beholder.  It  is  not  mere  self-rapt 
thought  or  inward  contemplation,  but  a  future 
vision  of  God  which  is  promised.  Meanwhile 
Nature  and  her  works  are  employed  in  Scripture, 
not  only  as  proofs  of  goodness  in  God,  but  also 
as  symbols  representative  of  what  He  has  in 
keeping  for  them  wbo  shall  attain.  Out  of  the 
storehouse  of  Nature  are  taken  the  materials  — 
the  light  the  rainbow,  the  sapphire,  and  the  sea 
of  glass — to  set  forth,  as  far  as  can  be  set  forth, 
the  things  that  shall  be,  —  sight,  the  noblest  sense 
here,  made  the  type  of  the  highest  mental  act 
hereafter ;  and  Nature  the  spectacle  given  to  em- 
ploy sight  now,  and  to  adumbrate  the  things  that 
shall  be  in  heaven :  —  this  is  the  high  function 
assigned  by  Scripture  to  sight  and  to  Nature. 

When,  therefore,  in  the  light  of  these  thoughts 
we  study  Nature  in  this,  her  highest  poetic  aspect, 
we  may-well  feel  that  we  are  engaged  in  no  triv- 
al  employment,  but  in  one  befitting  an  immortal 
being  Even  the  most  common  acts  of  minutely 
observing  Nature's  handiwork  may  in  this  way 


86         THE  MYSTICAL  SIDE  OF  NATURE. 

partake  of  a  religious  character.  How  much 
more  when  the  great  spectacle  of  Nature  lends  it- 
self to  devout  imagination,  and  becomes  as  it 
were  the  steps  of  a  stair  ascending  toward  the 
Eternal! 


CHAPTER  VH. 

KtlMBVAL  IMAGINATION  WORKING  ON  NATUBB 
—  LANGUAGE  AND  MYTHOLOGY. 

THE  thought  with  which  the  last  chapter  closed 
opens  up  views  which  are  boundless.  Through 
the  imaginative  apprehension  of  outward  Nature, 
and  through  the  beauty  inherent  in  it,  we  get  a 
glimpse  into  the  connection  of  the  visible  world 
with  the  realities  of  morality  and  of  religion. 
.  The  vivid  feeling  of  Beauty  suggests,  what  other 
avenues  of  thought  more  fully  disclose,  that  the 
complicated  mechanism  of  Nature  which  Science 
investigates  and  formulates  into  physical  law  is 
not  the  whole,  that  it  is  but  the  case  or  outer 
shell  of  something  greater  and  better  than  itself, 
that  through  this  mechanism  and  above  it,  within 
it,  and  beyond  it,  there  lie  existences  which 
Science  has  not  yet  formulated  —  probably  never 
can  formulate  —  a  supersensible  world,  which,  to 
the  soul,  is  more  real  and  of  higher  import  than 
any  which  the  senses  reveal.  It  is  apprehended 
by  other  faculties  than  those  through  which 
Science  works,  yet  it  is  in  no  way  opposed  to 
Science,  but  in  perfect  harmony  with  it,  while, 
transcending  it. }  The  mechanical  explanation  of 


88  LANGUAGE  AND  MYTHOLOGY. 

things  —  of  the  Universe  —  we  accept  as  far  as 
it  goes,  but  we  refuse  to  take  it  as  the  whole  ac- 
count of  the  matter,  for  we  know,  on  the  testi- 
mony of  moral  and  spiritual  powers,  that  there 
is  more  beyond,  and  that  that  which  is  behind 
and  beyond  the  mechanism  is  higher  and  nobler 
than  the  mechanism.  We  refuse  to  regard  the 
Universe  as  only  a  machine,  and  hold  by  the  in- 
tuitions of  faith  and  of  Poetry,  though  the  ob- 
jects which  these  let  in  on  us  cannot  be  counted, 
measured,  or  weighed,  or  verified  by  any  of  the 
tests  which  some  physicists  demand  as  the  only 
gauges  of  reality.  This  ideal  but  most  real 
region,  which  the  visible  world  in  part  hides  from 
us,  in  part  reveals,  is  the  » abode  of  that  super- 
sensible truth  to  wjiich  conscience  witnesses,  — 
the  special  dwelling-place  of  the  One  Supreme 
Mind.  The  mechanical  world  and  the  ideal  or 
spiritual  are  both  actual.  Neither  is  to  be  denied, 
and  Imagination  and  Poetry  do  their  best  work 
when  they  body  forth  those  glimpses  of  beauty 
and  goodness  which  flash  upon  us  through  the 
outer  shell  of  Nature's  mechanism. 

But 

"  Descending 
From  these  imaginative  heights," 

we  must  turn  to  the  humbler  task  of  showing  by 
a  few  concrete  examples  how  Imagination  has 
actually  worked  on  the  plastic  stuff  supplied  by 
Nature.  To  this  th#  readiest  5way  would  be  to 
turn  to  the  works  of  the  great  poets,  and  see  how 


LANGUAGE  AND  MYTHOLOGY.  89 

they,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  have  dealt  with  the 
outward  world.     Before  doing  so,  however,  a  few 
words  may  be  given  to  the  marks  which  Imagina-  I 
tion  has  impressed  on  Nature  in  the  prehistoric  \ 
and  preliterary  ages.     The  record  of  this  process 
lies  imbedded  in  two  fossil  creations,  Language 
and  Mythology. 

Language.  —  In  the  very  childhood  of  the  race, 
long  before   regular  poetry   or  literature  were 
thought  of,  there  was  a  time  when  Imagination, 
working  on  the  appearances  of  the  visible  world, 
was  the  great  weaver  of  human  speech,  the  most 
powerful  |igent  in  forming  the  marvelous  fabric 
of  language.     It  has  long  been  well  known  to  all 
who  have  given   attention  to  the  subject,  that 
Metaphor  has  played  a  large  part  in  the  original  \ 
formation  of  language.     But  how  large  that  part   ' 
is  has  only  been  recently  made  evident  by  the 
researches  of  Comparative  Philology.     Metaphor, 
as  all  know,  means  "  the  transferring  of  a  name 
from  the  object  to  which  it  properly  belongs  to   i 
other  objects  which  strike  the  mind  as  in  some  ( 
way  resembling  the  first  object."    Now  this  is  the 
great  instrument  which  works  at  the  production 
of  a  large  portion  of  language.    And  Imagination 
is  the  power  which^creates  metaphor,  which  sees    ^ 
resemblances  between  things,  seizes  on  them,  and 
makes  them  the  occasion  of  transferring  the  name 
from  the  well  known   original  object  to   some 
other  object  resembling  it,  which  still  waits  for  a 
lame.     Even  in  our  own  day  newly-invented  ol> 


90  LANGUAGE  AND  MYTHOLOGY. 

jects  are  often  named  by  metaphor,  but  meta- 
phors thus  consciously  formed  belong  to  a  Ilater 
age.  Long  before  such  metaphors  were  formed, 
Imagination  had  been  silently  and  unconsciously 
at  work,  naming  the  whole  world  of  mental  and 
spiritual  existences  by  metaphors  taken  from  vis- 
ible and  tangible  things.  It  is  quite  a  common- 
place that  the  whole  vocabulary  by  which  we 
name  our  souls,  our  mental  states,  our  emotions, 
abstract  conceptions,  invisible  and  spiritual  real- 
ities, is  woven  in  the  earliest  ages  by  the  Imagi- 
nation from  the  resemblances  which  it  seemed  to 
perceive  between  the  subtle  and  stilL  unnamed 
things  of  mind,  and  objects  or  aspects  of  the  ex- 
ternal world.  This  is  not  so  easily  seen  in  the 
English  language,  because  owing  to  our  having 
borrowed  almost  all  our  words  expressive  of  men- 
tal things  from  other  languages,  the  marks  of 
metaphor  are  to  our  eyes  obliterated.  In  fact  all 
our  words  for  mental  and  spiritual  things  are  like 
coins  which,  having  passed  through  many  hands, 
have  had  the  original  image  and  superscription 
aearly  quite  worn  out.  None  the  less  these  are 
still  to  be  traced  by  those  who  have  their  eyes 
exercised  to  it  by  reason  of  use.  But  it  is  man- 
ifest in  German,  which  has  spun  a  large  part  of 
its  philosophical  vocabulary  out  of  native  roots. 
It  may  be  seen,  in  some  measure,  in  Latin,  but 
much  more  in  Greek  philosophical  language. 

This  whole  subject  .has  been  "so  well  handled 
and    so    amply    illustrated    by    Professor    Max 


LANGUAGE  AND  MYTHOLOGY.  91 

M filler  in  the  Second  Series  of  his  Lectures  on 
"  the  Science  of  Language,"  and  in  Archbishop 
Trench's  instructive  and  delightful  volumes  on 
"Words,"  that  I  can  but  refer  to  these  works 
and  make  here  a  few  excerpts  from  them  as  ex- 
amples of  the  general  principle  of  thought  to 
which  I  have  adverted.  Locke,  as  Professor 
Miiller  shows,  long  ago  asserted  that  in  all  lan- 
guages "  names  which  stand  for  things  which  fall 
not  under  our  senses  have  had  their  first  rise  from 
sensible  ideas." 

Our  word  "  spirit "  comes  from  the  Latin  spiri- 
tus,  the  breath,  and  spiro,  to  breathe ;  so  animus, 
the  soul,  a  seat  of  the  affections,  and  anima^  the 
living  principle,  are  connected  with  the  Greek 
ai/6/xos,  wind.  Indeed,  anima  is  sometimes  used 
in  Latin  for  a  breeze,  as  readers  of  Horace  will 
remember,  and  all  are  connected  with  the  Greek 
verb  aw,  to  blow.  Trvev/m,  the  Greek  word  used 
in  Scripture  to  express  spirit  and  a  spiritual 
being,  originally  means  wind  and  breath,  from 
the  verb  7iWo>,  to  blow  and  to  breathe.  Again, 
\l/vx^  life  and  soul,  is  connected  with  ^w,  which 
in  Homer  means  to  breathe,  to  blow.  So  that  in 
all  these  cases  we  see  that  men,  when  they  first  be- 
came aware  of  an  invisible  and  spiritual  principle 
within  themselves,  named  it  by  an  act  of  imag- 
ination from  the  most  impalpable  entity  their 
senses  perceived,  —  the  wind,  or  the  breath. 
Again,  take  our  word  "  ideal."  It  comes  from 
the  Greek  £&,  from  lfelV)  to  see,  originally  a  word 


92  LANGUAGE  AND  MYTHOLOGY. 

of  sight,  expressing  the  look  or  appearance  of  a 
thing,  which  Plato  in  time  employed  to  express 
the  most  spiritual  entities,  the  supersensible  pat- 
tern of  all  created  things.  Again,  our  words 
44  imagination  "  and  "  imaginative,"  how  have  they 
been  formed?  The  Latin  word  imaginatio  occurs 
but  rarely ;  more  frequently  the  verb  imaginor, 
to  picture  to  one's  self;  more  frequent  still  is 
imago,  as  if  imitago,  from  imitor,  to  imitate.  This 
last  is  connected  with  the  Greek  verb  fu//,€o/*at, 
meaning  also  to  imitate ;  and  the  original  of 
these,  and  all  the  cognate  words,  both  Latin  and 
Greek,  is  the  Sanscrit  root  md,  to  measure.  So 
from  this  very  palpable  process  of  measuring  the 
land,  there  have  been  spun  all  the  subtle  and 
delicate  words  that  express  the  working  of  imag- 
ination. So  the  mental  processes  expressed  by 
44  apprehend,"  "  comprehend,"  and  "  conceive," 
are  all  derived  from  bodily  processes,  and  mean 
respectively  to  grasp  at  a  thing  with  the  hand,  to 
grasp  a  thing  together,  to  take  and  hold  together. 
Again,  the  word  "  perceive,"  from  the  Latin  per- 
dp  ere,  was  in  the  language  of  husbandry  used  for 
the  farmer  gathering  in  the  fruits  of  his  fields  and 
storing  them  in  his  garner.  Was  then  the  mind 
conceived  of  as  a  husbandman  who  gathers  in 
the  notices  of  sense  from  the  outer  world,  and 
stores  them  in  an  invisible  garner  ?  To  "  incul 
cate :  "  here  is  another  mental  word  borrowed 
from  husbandry.  It  means  to  tread  or  stamp 
firmly  in  with  the  heel,  and  was  used  of  the 


LANGUAGE  AND  MYTHOLOGY.  93 

farmer,  who,  with  his  foot  or  some  instrument, 
carefully  pressed  home  into  the  earth  the  seed 
which  he  had  sown.  We  see  how  well  the  meta- 
phor can  be  transferred  to  the  process  of  careful 
teaching  —  to  the  clergyman,  for  instance,  who 
inculcates  religious  truth.  These  are  but  a  few 
obvious  and  well-known  samples  of  a  process 
which  has  gone  on  in  all  languages,  and  has  fur- 
nished forth  our  whole  stock  of  names  for  men- 
tal operations  and  spiritual  truths.  And  Imag- 
ination has  been  the  power  which  has  presided 
over  the  process,  the  interpreter  mediating  be- 
tween two  worlds,  and  naming  the  unseen  real- 
ities of  the  inner  world  by  analogies  which  she 
perceives  in  them  to  the  sensible  objects  of  the 
outer.  Disciples  of  the  Hume  philosophy  will  see 
in  these  facts  of  language  a  confirmation  of  their 
master's  dictum  that  all  ideas  and  thoughts  are 
but  weak  and  faded  copies  o'f  the  more  vivid  im- 
pressions first  stamped  on  the  senses.  But  those 
who  have  been  learners  in  another  school,  to 
whom  the  world  of  thought  has  more  power  and 
reality  than  the  world  of  sense,  they  will  read  in 
these  facts  a  different  lesson,  that  He  has  made 
all  things  double,  the  one  over  against  the  other, 
and  that  the  thought  by  which  both  are  pervaded 
is  one. 

Truly  then  Las  it  been  said,  "  Language  is  fos- 
sil poetry."  And  any  one  who  will  set  himself 
to  spell  out  those  fossils,  and  the  meanings  they 
contain,  will  find  a  wonderful  record  of  the  way 


94  LANGUAGE  AND  MYTHOLOGY. 

in  which  the  mind  of  man  has  wrought  in  their 
formation.  This  record  will  lead  him  down  into 
layers  of  thought  as  varied  as  any  which  the 
geologist  deciphers,  filled  with  more  subtle  and 
marvelous  formations  than  any  animal  or  vege- 
table fossils.  For  full  exposition  and  illustration 
of  the  mental  processes  by  which  so  large  a  por- 
tion of  language  has  been  created,  the  reader 
should  turn  to  Professor  Miiller's  volume,  to 
which  I  have  already  referred. 

Wholly  different  from  this  primeval  process  of 
naming  things  by  unconscious  metaphors  is  the 
modern  metaphor,  as  we  find  it  in  the  poets. 
When  Shelley  speaks  of  the  moon  as 

"  That  orbed  maiden  with  white  fire  laden, 
Whom  mortals  call  the  Moon," 

he  is  using  a  metaphor,  and  a  very  fine  one,  but 
he  does  so  with  perfect  consciousness  that  it  is  a 
metaphor,  and  there  is  not  the  least  danger  of  the 
poet,  or  any  one  else,  confounding  the  moon  with 
any  maiden,  earthly  or  heavenly. 

Again,  when  Mrs.  Hemans  addresses  the  moan- 
ing night- winds  as 

"  Wild,  and  mighty,  and  mysterious  singers ! 
At  whose  tones  my  heart  within  me  burns," 

there  is  no  likelihood  of  any  confusion  between 
the  winds  and  mortal  singers,  no  chance  of  the 
metaphor  ever  growing  into  mythology. 
Once  more :  to  return  to  Shelley  — 

"  Winter  came ;  the  wind  was  his  whip  • 
One  choppy  finger  was  on  his  lip : 


LANGUAGE  AND  MYTHOLOGY.  95 

He  had  torn  the  cataracts  from  the  hills, 
And  they  clanked  at  his  girdle  like  manacles , 
His  breath  was  a  chain  that  without  a  sound 
The  earth,  and  the  air,  and  the  water  bound ; 
He  came,  fiercely  driven  in  his  chariot- throne 
By  the  ten-fold  blasts  of  the  arctic  zone." 

Here  is  not  only  metaphor,  but  personification  so 
strong  and  vivid  that  it  is  only  kept  from  passing 
into  mythology  by  the  conscious  and  reflective 
character  of  the  age  in  which  it  was  created. 

Mythology.  —  The  other  great  primitive  crea- 
tion wrought  by  the  action  of  the  human  imagi- 
nation, in  its  attempts  to  name  and  explain  the 
appearances  of  visible  Nature,  was  ancient  my- 
thology. That  huge  unintelligible  mass  of  fable 
which  we  find  imbedded  in  the  poets  of  Greece 
and  Rome  has  long  been  a  riddle  which  no  learn- 
ing could  read.  But  just  as  modern  telescopes 
have  resolved  the  dim  masses  of  nebulae  into  dis- 
tinct stars,  so  the  resources  of  that  modern  schol- 
arship called  Comparative  Philology  seems  at  last 
on  the  way  to  let  in  light  on  the  hitherto  im- 
penetrable secret  of  the  origin  of  religious  myths. 
It  has  gradually  been  made  probable  that  the 
Olympian  gods,  whatever  capricious  shapes  they 
afterward  assumed,  were  in  their  origin  but  the 
first  feeble  efforts  of  the  human  mind  to  name 
the  unnamable,  to  give  local  habitation  and 
expression  to  the  incomprehensible  Being  who 
haunted  men's  inmost  thoughts,  but  was  abovo 
their  highest  powers  of  conception.  In  making 
this  attempt,  the  religious  instinct  of  our  Aryan 


96  LANGUAGE  AND  MYTHOLOGY. 

forefathers  wrought,  not  through  the  abstracting 
or  philosophical  faculty,  but  through  Jthe  thought- 
embodying,  shaping  power  fof  imagination,  by 
which  in  later  ages  all  true  poets  have  worked, 
that  in  the  dim  foretime  fashioned  the  whole 
fabric  of  mythology.  It  was  the  same  faculty  of 
giving  a  visible  shape  to  thought. 

As  soon  as  man  wakes  up  to  think  of  himself, 
what  he  is,  how  he  is  here,  he  feels  that  he  de- 
pends not  on  himself,  but  on  something  other 
than  and  independent  of  himself ;  that  there  is 
One  on  whom  "our  dark  foundations  rest."  "It 
is  He  that  made  us,  and  not  we  ourselves  ;  "  this 
is  the  instinctive  cry  of  the  human  heart  when  it 
begins  to  reflect  that  it  is  here,  and  to  ask  how  it 
came  here.  This  consciousness  of  God,  which  is 
the  dawn  of  all  religion,  is  reached  not  as  a  con- 
clusion reasoned  out  from  premises,  not  as  a  law 
generalized  from  a  multitude  of  facts,  but  as  a 
first  instinct  of  intelligence,  a  perception  flashed 
on  the  soul  as  directly  as  impressions  are  borne 
in  upon  the  sense,  a  faith  which  may  be  after- 
ward fortified  by  arguments,  but  is  itself  anterior 
to  all  argument.1  When  this  thought  awoke, 
when  men  felt  the  reality  of  "  that  secret  thing 
which  they  see  by  reverence  alone,"  how  were 
they  to  conceive  of  it,  how  name  it  ?  for  a  name 
was  necessary  to  retain  any  thought  as  a  per- 
manent possession,  much  more  this  thought,  the 
highest  of  all  thoughts.  The  story  of  the  well- 

1  See  Miiller's  Lectures  on  Language,  2d  series,  pp.  435,  436. 


LANGUAGE  AND  MYTHOLOGY.  97 

known  Dyaus,  or  the  formation  of  this  name  for 
the  Supreme  God,  has  been  told  so  often  of  late 
by  Professor  M.  Miiller,  in  his  various  works,  that 
I  should  not  have  ventured  to  repeat  it  after  him 
once  again,  had  it  not  been  necessary  for  the  illus- 
tration of  my  present  subject.  It  has  been  proved 
that  in  almost  all  the  Aryan  languages  —  San- 
scrit, Greek,  Latin,  Teutonic,  Celtic  —  the  name 
for  the  Highest,  the  Supreme  Being,  has  sprung 
from  one  root.  "  The  Highest  God  received  the 
same  name  in  the  ancient  mythology  of  India, 
Greece,  Italy,  Germany,  and  retained  the  name 
whether  worshiped  on  the  Himalayan  mountains 
or  among  the  oaks  of  Dodona,  or  in  the  Capitol 
of  Rome,  or  in  the  forests  of  Germany."  The 
Sanscrit  Dyaus,  the  Greek  Zeus,  the  Latin  Jupi- 
ter (Jovis),  the  Teutonic  Tiu  (whence  our  Tues- 
day), are  originally  one  word,  and  spring  from 
one  root.  That  root  is  found  in  Sanscrit,  in  the 
old  word  dyu,  which  originally  meant  sky  and  day. 
Dyaus  therefore  meant  the  bright  heavenly  Deity. 
When  men  began  to  think  of  the  incomprehensi- 
ble Being  who  is  above  all  things,  and  compre- 
hends all  things,  and  when  they  sought  to  name 
Him,  the  name  must  be  taken  from  some  known 
visible  thing,  and  what  so  natural  as  that  the 
bright,  blue,  boundless,  all-embracing,  sublime, 
and  infinite  vault,  which  contains  man  and  all 
that  man  knows,  should  be  made  the  type  and 
symbol  to  furnish  that  name  ? 

When  the  old  Aryan  people,  before  their  dis 


98  LANGUAGE  AND  MYTHOLOGY. 

persion,  thus  named  their  thought  about  the  Su- 
preme as  the  Shining  One,  Professor  Miiller  does 
not  think  that  it  was  any  mere  personification  of 
the  sky,  or  Nature-worship,  or  idolatry  that  led 
to  their  so  naming  Him.  Rather  he  thinks  that 
that  old  race  were  still  believers  in  one  God, 
whom  they  worshiped  under  the  name  Heaven- 
Father.  This  inquiry,  however,  lies  beyond  our 
present  purpose.  What  it  more  concerns  us  now 
to  note  is  that  it  was  a  high  effort  of  thought 
to  make  the  blue,  calm,  all-embracing  sky  the 
type  and  symbol  of  the  Invisible  One,  and  that 
the  power  which  wrought  out  that  first  name  for 
the  Supreme  was  Imagination  working  uncon- 
sciously, we  might  almost  say  involuntarily  — 
the  same  power  which  in  its  later  conscious  ac- 
tion, under  control  of  the  poet's  will,  has  found  a 
vent  for  itself  in  Poetry. 

In  the  same  way  Comparative  Philology  ac- 
counts for  all  the  stories  about  the  beautiful  youth 
Phoebus  Apollo,  Athene,  and  Aphrodite. 

"  I  look,"  Professor  Miiller  says,  "  on  the  sun- 
rise and  sunset,  on  the  daily  return  of  night  and 
day,  on  the  battle  between  light  and  darkness,  on 
the  whole  solar  drama  in  all  its  details  that  is 
acted  every  day,  every  month,  every  year,  in 
heaven  and  in  earth,  as  the  principal  subject  of 
early  mythology.  I  consider  that  the  very  idea 
of  Divine  powers  sprang  from  the  wonderment 
with  which  the  forefathers  of  the  Aryan  family 
stared  at  the  bright  (devil)  powers  that  came  and 


LANGUAGE  AND  MYTHOLOGY.  99 

went  no  one  knew  whence  or  whither,  that  never 
failed,  never  faded,  never  died,  and  were  called 
immortal,  i.  e.,  unfading,  as  compared  with  the 
feeble  and  decaying  race  of  man.  I  consider  the 
regular  recurrence  of  phenomena  an  almost  indis- 
pensable condition  of  their  being  raised,  through, 
the  charms  of  mythological  phraseology,  to  the 
rank  of  immortals :  and  I  give  a  proportionably 
small  place  to  the  meteorological  phenomena,  such 
as  clouds,  thunder,  and  lightning,  which,  although 
causing  for  a  time  a  violent  commotion  in  nature 
and  in  the  heart  of  man,  would  not  be  ranked 
together  with  the  immortal  bright  beings,  but 
would  rather  be  classed  together  as  their  subjects 
or  as  their  enemies." 

In  this  eloquent  passage  Professor  Miiller  ex- 
presses his  well-known  "  Solar  Theory "  of  my- 
thology. At  the  close  of  the  passage  he  alludes 
to  a  counter  theory  which  has  been  called  the 
Meteoric,  which  makes  mythology  find  its  chief 
field,  not  in  the  calm  and  uniform  phenomena  of 
the  sun's  coming  and  going,  and  of  day  and  night, 
but  in  the  occasional  and  violent  convulsions  of 
storm,  thunder,  and  earthquake.  Not  what  is 
fixed  and  uniform,  but  what  is  sudden  and  start- 
ling, most  arrests  the  imagination,  according  to 
this  latter  theory.  But  it  does  not  concern  us 
here  to  discuss  the  claims  of  these  rival  views,  but. 
rather  to  remark  that  in  both  alike  it  is  the  im- 
aginat;on  in  man  to  which  the  aspects  of  heaven, 
whether  uniform  or  occasional,  calm  or  torbulent, 


100  LANGUAGE  AND  MYTHOLOGY. 

make  their  appeal,  and  that  when,  according  to 
that  tendency  of  language  noted  by  Professor 
Miiller,  words  assume,  an  independent  power  and 
dominate  over  the  mind  instead  of  being  domi- 
nated by  it,  it  is  Imagination  which  throws  itself 
into  the  tendency,  and  takes  occasion  from  it  to 
weave  its  many-tissued,  many-colored  web  of 
mythologic  fable. 

But  however  adequate  such  theories  may  be 
to  people  the  whole  Pantheon  of  Olympus,  they 
seem  quite  out  of  place  when  brought  to  ac.count 
for  the  inhabitants  of  this  lower  world.  Nothing 
can  seem  less  likely  than  that  the  conceptions  of 
Achilles  and  Hector  can  have  arisen  from  myths 
of  the  dawn.  Characters  that  stand  out  so  firmly 
drawn,  so  human  and  so  natural,  in  the  gallery  of 
human  portraiture,  can  hardly  have  been  shaped 
out  of  such  skyey  materials.  One  could  as  read- 
ily believe  that  Othello  or  Macbeth  had  such  an 
origin. 

It  is  easy  to  laugh  at  those  early  fancies  which 
men  dreamed  in  the  childhood  of  the  world,  and 
took  for  truth  ;  and  to  congratulate  ourselves  that 
we,  with  our  modern  lights  of  Science,  have  long 
outgrown  those  mythic  fables ;  but  with  the  ex- 
acter  knowledge  of  the  world's  mechanism  which 
Science  has  taught  us,  is  there  not  something  we 
have  lost  ?  Whither  has  gone  that  fine  wonder 
with  which  the  first  men  gazed  on  the  earth  and 
tho  heavens  from  the  plains  of  Iran  and  Chal- 
dea  ?  It  lies  buried  beneath  the  mass  of  second- 


LANGUAGE  AND  MYTHOLOGY.  101 

hand  thought  and  information  which  Science  has 
heaped  upon  us.  Would  it  not  be  well  if  we 
could  win  back  the  truth,  of  which  a  dull  me- 
chanical or  merely  logical  way  of  thinking  has 
long  robbed  us,  that  the  outward  world,  with  all 
its  movements,  is  not  a  mere  dead  machine,  going 
by  ropes  and  pulleys  and  cog-wheels,  but  an  or- 
ganism full  of  a  mysterious  life,  which  defies  our 
most  subtle  analysis,  and  escapes  us  when  placed 
in  the  crucible?  This  feeling,  that  things  are 
alive  and  not  dead,  rests  at  the  bottom  of  all  my- 
thology, the  one  root  of  truth  underlying  the 
huge  mass  of  fable.  How  to  regain  this  percep- 
tion of  something  divine  in  Nature,  more  than 
eye  and  ear  discover,  and  to  do  this  in  harmony 
with  all  the  facts  and  laws  which  Science  has  as- 
certained, this  is  a  problem  reserved  for  thought- 
ful men  in  the  future  time. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

SOME    OF    THE    WAYS    IN    WHICH    POETS    DEAL 
WITH  NATURE. 

THOSE  who  have  not  given  attention  to  the 
subject  are  apt  to  imagine  that  the  chief  creators 
of  mythological  fables  were  the  poets,  and  espe- 
cially Homer.  They  suppose  that  the  early  poets, 
by  sheer  power  of  imagination,  invented  those 
stories  to  adorn  their  poems,  and  so  gave  them 
currency  among  the  people.  It  was  not  so.  Even 
Homer,  the  earliest  poet  whom  we  know,  belonged 
to  an  era  when  the  myth-creating  instinct  was 
past  its  prime,  and  already  on  the  wane.  The 
fables  of  the  gods,  their  loves  and  their  quarrels, 
as  these  appear  in  his  poems,  there  is  no  reason 
to  suppose  that  he  created  them  or  imagined 
them  for  the  first  time.  It  would  rather  seem 
that  they  had  been  long  current  in  popular  belief, 
and  that  he  only  used  and  gave  expression  to 
stories  which  he  found  ready-made.  Here  and 
there  in  Homer  you  may  still  detect  some  traces 
of  the  mythologizing  tendency  still  lingering,  and 
catch  the  primitive  physical  meaning  of  the  myth 
shining  through  the  anthropomorphic  covering 
which  it  afterward  assumed.  Such  glimpses  we 


HOW  POETS  DEAL  WITH  NATURE.      103 

get  in  Zeus,  when  he  gathers  the  clouds  in  the 
sky,  when  he  rouses  himself  to  snow  upon  men 
and  manifests  his  feathery  shafts,  when  he  rains 
continuously,  when  he  bows  the  heavens  and 
comes  down  upon  the  peaks  of  Ida.  Or  again, 
when  Poseidon,  the  earth-encompassing,  the  earth- 
shaker,  yokes  his  car  at  Hegese  and  drives  full 
upon  the  Trojan  strand :  I  take  the  passage  from 
Mr.  Cordery's  translation  of  the  Iliad :  — 

"  He  entered  in, 

And  there  beneath  his  chariot  drew  to  yoke 
Fast-flying  horses,  maned  with  flowing  gold, 
Hooved  with  bright  brass  ;  and  girt  himself  in  gold, 
Took  golden  goad,  and  sprang  upon  the  car ; 
So  forth  upon  the  billows,  round  whose  path 
Huge  monsters  gamboled,  gathering  from  the  depth 
Afar,  anear,  and  joyous  knew  their  lord  ; 
Ocean  for  gladness  stood  in  sunder  cloven, 
Whilst  lightly  flew  the  steeds,  nor  'neath  the  car 
The  burnished  axle  moistened  with  the  brine  :  — 
Thus  tow'rd  the  fleet  his  coursers  bore  the  god." 

Here  we  have,  half-physical,  half -mythological, 
like  Milton's  half-created  lion,  the  fore  part  per- 
fect, the  hinder  part  still  clay,  a  well-known  nat- 
ural appearance.  After  the  storm-winds  are  laid, 
but  while  the  sea  still  feels  their  power,  it  is  thus 
that  the  high-crested  breakers  may  be  seen  rac- 
ing shore  wards  with  their  white  manes  backward 
streaming,  and  glorified  with  rainbow  hues  from 
a  bright  dawn  or  a  splendid  sunset  poured  upon 
them  from  the  land. 

But  for  the  most  part,  even  Homer,  early  poet 
though  he  was,  has  quittf  forgotten  that  original 


104  SOME  OF  THE    WAYS 

aspect  of  Nature  out  of  which  each  god  was 
shaped,  and  has  invested  them  with  entirely  hu- 
man attributes,  even  with  human  follies  and  vices, 
which  have  no  connection  at  all  with  the  primary 
fact,  but  are  the  wildest  freaks  of  extravagant 
fancy.  If  then  even  Homer  has  so  much  forgot- 
ten the  physical  origin  of  his  mythic  gods,  how 
must  it  be  with  the  tragic  poets !  JEschylus  and 
Sophocles  we  see  have  entirely  put  aside  the  im- 
moral fables  about  them,  and  are  anxious  to  find 
the  truth  which  lies  at  the  root  of  the  popular  be- 
lief, and  to  moralize  the  whole  conception  of  the 
gods.  When  we  come  down  to  the  Latin  poets, 
we  do  not  find  even  this  effort ;  but  the  gods 
they  have  borrowed  from  Greece  are  used  as  mere 
poetic  machines,  with  as  little  of  either  physical 
or  moral  meaning  as  a  modern  romance-writer 
might  use  fairies,  gnomes,  or  hobgoblins. 

Although  in  the  more  imaginative  of  modern 
poets,  modes  of  conceiving  Nature,  and  expres- 
sions every  here  and  there  crop  out,  which  in  an 
earlier  age  would  certainly  have  flowered  into  my- 
thology, it  is  nevertheless  true  that,  ever  since  the 
literary  age  set  in,  poets  in  general  have  viewed 
Nature  with  a  more  familiar  eye,  and  described  it 
in  language  which  ordinary  speech  would  not  dis- 
own. I  shall  now  endeavor  to  classify  the  several 
ways  in  which  Nature  is  dealt  with  by  the  poets, 
the  several  aspects  .of  it  which  enter  most  promi- 
nently into  Poetry.  It  will  be  enough  for  my 
present  purpose  merely  to  generalize,  under  a  few 


IN  WHICH  POETS  DEAL   WITH  NATURE.     105 

heads,  the  most  obvious  of  these  forms,  without 
attempting  to  analyze  them  or  to  account  for 
them. 

I.  The  first  form  I  shall  notice  is  the  expres- 
sion of  that  simple,  spontaneous,  unreflecting 
pleasure  which  all  unsophisticated  beings  feel  in 
free  open-air  life.  We  all  know  how  children 
feel  when  they  are  let  loose  to  wander  at  will  in 
green  fields,  or  by  a  burn-side,  or  under  the  bud- 
ding woods  when  the  primroses  and  anemones 
first  appear.  The  full-grown  man,  too,  the  man 
of  business  or  letters,  knows  how  —  when  his 
nerves  have  been  over-strung  and  his  heart  fretted 
by  worldly  things  —  a  day  abroad  under  a  blue 
sky,  with  a  soft  southwest  blowing,  restores  and 
harmonizes  him.  Old  persons,  we  may  have  ob- 
served, who  have  seen  and  suffered  much,  from 
whom  the  world  and  its  interests  are  receding: 
what  a  sense  of  peace  and  refreshment  comes 
over  them  as  they  gaze  in  .quiet  over  a  distant 
landscape  with  the  sunlight  upon  it ! 

This  delight,  which  children,  busy  men,  and 
weary  age  alike  find  in  out-of-door  life,  may  be 
said  to  be  merely  physical,  a  thing  of  the  nerves 
and  animal  spirits.  It  is  so,  no  doubt,  but  it  is 
something  more.  Along  with  pleasure  to  the 
senses,  there  enters  in  something  more  ethereal, 
not  the  less  real  because  it  may  be  undefinable. 
This  fresh  child-like  delight  in  Nature  lias  found 
expression  abundantly  in  the  poets,  especially  in 


106  SOME  OF  THE   WAYS 

those  of  the  early  time.  Chaucer,  before  all 
others,  is  full  of  it.  As  one  sample  out  of  many, 
take  this.  In  the  Prologue  to  "  The  Legend  of 
Good  Women,"  he  tells  that  he  has  such  love  to 
the  daisy  that  — 

"  When  comen  is  the  May, 
Then  in  my  bed  there  daweth  me  no  day 
That  I  n'am  up  and  walking  in  the  mead, 
To  see  this  flower  against  the  sunne'  spread, 
When  it  upriseth  early  in  the  morrow ; 
That  blissful  sight  softeneth  all  my  sorrow ; 
So  glad  am  I  when  that  I  have  presence 
Of  it,  to  doen  it  all  reverence, 
As  she  that  is  of  all  flow'rs  the  flow'r." 

Then  he  goes  on  to  describe  himself  kneeling 
down  on  the  sod  to  greet  the  daisy  when  it  first 
opens : — 

"  And  down  on  knees  anon  right  I  me  set, 
And  as-!  could  this  freshe  flow'r  I  grette, 
Kneeling  always  till  it  unclosed  was 
Upon  the  small,  and  soft,  and  sweete  gras." 

So  we  see  Chaucer  has  been  beforehand  with 
Burns,  not  to  say  Wordsworth,  in  tender  affec- 
tion for  the  daisy. 

The  same  transparent  expression  of  delight  in 
the  open-air  world  comes  in  unexpectedly  in 
some  of  the  old  ballads,  which  are  concerned 
with  far  other  matters.  Thus  :  — 


"  When  leaves  be  large  and  long 
It 's  pleasant  walking  In  good  greenwood 
To  hear  the  small  birds'  song. 


IN  WHICH  POETS  DEAL    WITH  NATURE.    107 

The  woodweel  sang  and  would  not  cease. 

Sitting  upon  the  spray, 
So  loud  he  wakened  Robin  Hood, 

In  greenwood  where  he  lay." 

Suchlike  utterances  of  ballad- writers  and  early 
poets  might  be  multiplied  without  number.  It  ia 
a  penalty  we  have  to  pay  for  our  late  and  over- 
stimulated  civilization  that  such  direct  and  un» 
reflecting  expressions  of  gladness  in  the  face  of 
Nature  seem  hardly  any  longer  possible  for  a 
poet.  If  he  will  be  listened  to  by  our  jaded, 
sophisticated  ears,  it  is  not  enough  for  him  to 
utter  once  again  the  spontaneous  gladness  that 
human  hearts  feel,  and  always  will  feel,  in  the 
pleasant  air  and  the  sunshine ;  he  must  say  some- 
thing about  it  which  shall  be  novel,  and  out  of 
the  way,  something  subtle  or  analytic,  or  strongly 
stimulative.  And  yet  it  cannot  but  be  that  a 
poet  who  has  a  heart  keenly  sensitive  to  the  com- 
mon sights  of  earth  and  sky,  and  who  describes 
these  with  the  direct  freshness  which  feeling 
heart  and  clear  eye  always  give,  may  still  do 
much  to  win  back  men  from  over-subtilizing,  and 
to  make  them  feel  as  if  they  have  never  felt  be- 
fore— 

"  The  simple,  the  sincere  delight, 
The  habitual  scene  of  hill  and  dale, 
The  rural  herds,  the  vernal  gale, 
The  tangled  vetches7  purple  bloom, 
The  fragrance  of  the  bean's  perfume." 

II.  The  second  method  I  shall  mention  is  that 
of  using  Nature  as  a  background  or  setting  to 


108  SOME  OF  THE    WAYS 

human  action  or  emotion,  —  just  as  we  see  Ra- 
phael and  other  old  masters,  in  their  pictures  of  a 
Holy  Family,  bring  in  behind  the  human  groups 
a  far-off  mountain  line,  with  a  piece  of  blue  sky 
or  some  streaks  of  sunset  abcfve  it. 

This  is  the  way  in  which  Nature  is  very  fre- 
quently used  by  Homer  in  the  Iliad,  and,  es- 
pecially, in  the  Odyssey.  It  is  as  a  frame  or 
setting  to  his  pictures  of  human  action  and  char- 
acter. And  closely  allied  to  this  is  the  way  of 
illustrating  the  actions,  the  feelings,  sometimes 
the  sufferings,  of  men,  by  striking  similes  taken 
from  the  most  obvious  appearances  of  the  out- 
ward world,  or  from  the  doing  of  wild  creatures 
in  Nature.  This  is  a  use  of  Nature  in  which  the 
Iliad  of  Homer  especially  abounds,  although  all 
poets  down  to  our  own  day  have  freely  employed 
it.  In  the  Iliad  there  is  little  or  no  description 
of  the  scenes  in  which  the  battles  are  fought. 
The  features  are  hinted  at  by  single  epithets, 
such  as  many-fountained  Ida,  windy  Ilion,  deep- 
whirlpooled  Scamander,  and  the  presence  of  Nat- 
ure you  are  made  to  feel  by  images  fetched 
straight  from  every  element,  —  from  the  clouds, 
the  mountain-top,  the  woody  crag,  the  forest,  the 
sea  darkening  under  the  western  breeze,  the  mid 
night  sky  with  the  moon  and  the  stars  shining  in 
its  depths. 

But  there  is  in  the  Iliad  no  dwelling  on  the 
features  of  the  scenes  through  which  the  heroes 
pass,  such  as  you  find  in  the  Odyssey  and  in  the 


IN   WHICH  POETS  DEAL   WITH  NATURE.    109 

jEneid.  In  these  last,  more  than  in  the  Iliad, 
Nature  is  used  as  the  regular  framework  in  which 
human  actions  are  set.  I  cannot  now  stay  to 
quote  passages.  We  shall  in  the  sequel  see  how 
large  a  place  is  filled,  how  much  of  Nature  is  let 
in  upon  the  reader  by  Homer  in  his  similes,  which, 
are  almost  all  taken  from  common  occurrences  in 
Nature  or  from  the  working  of  man  with  Nature. 
Sometimes,  however,  we  are  made  to  feel  the 
presence  of  Nature  by  other  methods  than  that 
of  simile.  In  the  thick  of  the  great  battle  in  the 
llth  Book  of  the  Iliad,  just  before  Agamemnon 
breaks  forth  in  his  splendid  charge,  how  the  mind 
is  relieved  by  this  glance  aside  from  the  heat  and 
hurry  of  the  battle  to  the  cool  and  quiet  of  this 
woodland  scene :  — 

"  All  through  the  dawn,  and  as  the  day  grew  on 
From  either  side  the  shafts  were  showered  amain, 
And  fast  the  people  fell.    But  at  the  hour 
When  the  lone  woodman  in  the  mountain  glens 
Prepares  his  noonday  meal,  for  that  his  arms 
Are  weary  with  long  labor,  and  his  heart 
Had  had  its  fill  of  felling  the  tall  treen, 
And  craving  for  sweet  food  comes  over  him ; 
Just  at  that  hour  the  Danai  by  sheer  might 
Broke  through  their  foemen's  ranks,  each  shouting  loud 
To  cheer  his  comrade  on.    First  from  the  van 
Forth-leaping,  Agamemnon  slew  a  chief, 
Bienor," 

acd  then  he  presses  on  through  the  Trojan  host, 
to  slay,  and  slay,  and  slay. 

III.   Akin  to  this,  and  yet  distinct  from  it,  i* 


110  SOME  OF  THE    WAYS 

the  way  of  regarding  Nature  through  the  light  of 
the  human  and  especially  the  historic  events  VU1 
which  it  has  witnessed,  and  with  which  some  par- 
ticular spots  have  become  indelibly  associated.) 
This,  which  I  may  call  the  historic  coloring  of 
Nature,  has  been,  of  course,  the  slow  accretion 
of  the  ages,  and  only  in  quite  modern  times  is  it 
a  prominent  feature  in  the  poets.  The  poets  of 
Greece  and  Rome,  proud  as  they  were  of  the 
deeds  of  their  countrymen,  do  not  seem  to  have 
visited  their  great  battle-fields  nor  to  have  hung 
on  the  scenery  that  surrounded  them  with  that 
romantic  interest  which  modern  poets  do.  Mara- 
thon, Thermopylae,  Salamis,  names  of  glory  as 
they  were,  and  often  on  their  lips,  became  to  the 
Greek  imagination  names  for  deeds,  abstractions 
of  national  achievement,  rather  than  actual  local- 
ities to  be  visited  and  gazed  on  for  their  own 
sakes  and  for  the  memories  they  enshrined.  It 
is  an  English,  not  a  Greek,  poet  who  seizes  the 
great  features  of  the  immortal  plain,  and  sings  — 

"  The  mountains  look  on  Marathon, 
And  Marathon  looks  on  the  sea." 

The  same,  too,  who,  alluding  to  the  great  sea* 
fight,  gives  the  scenery  also :  — 

"  A  king  sat  on  the  rocky  brow 
That  looks  o'er  sea-born  Salamis, 
And  ships  in  thousands  lay  below, 
And  men  in  nations  all  were  his. 
He  counted  them  at  break  of  day, 
And  when  the  sun  set  where  were  they  ?  " 


/#   WHICH  POETS  DEAL   WITH  NATURE.    Ill 

• 

Perhaps  of  all  modern  poets  Walter  Scott  is  the 
one  who  has  looked  on  the  earth  most  habitually 
as  seen  through  tfte  coloring  with  which  historic 
events  and  great  historic  names  have  invested  it. 
It  is  not  only  that  he  has  in  his  romantic  epics 
described  the  actual  features  of  the  fields  of  Flod- 
den  and  of  Bannockburn  with  a  minuteness  for- 
eign to  the  genius  of  the  ancients.  He  has  done 
this.  But,  besides,  wherever  he  set  his  foot  in 
his  native  land  —  not  in  a  battle-field  alone,  but 
by  ruined  keep  or  solitary  moor,  or  rocky  sea- 
shore or  western  island  —  there  rose  before  his 
eye  the  human  forms  either  of  the  heroic  past  or 
of  the  lowlier  peasantry,  and  if  no  actual  record 
hung  among  them,  his  imagination  supplied  the 
want,  and  peopled  the  places  with  characters  ap- 
propriate, which  shall  remain  interwoven  with 
the  very  features  of  the  scenes  while  the  name 
of  Scotland  lasts. 

"  For  thou  upon  a  hundred  streams, 

By  tales  of  love  and  sorrow. 
Of  faithful  love,  undaunted  truth, 
Hast  shed  the  power  of  Yarrow." 

In  some  men,  not  wanting  in  imagination,  the 
only  aspect  in  which  scenery  interests  them  is 
when  it  is  linked  to  history.  This  is  conspic- 
uously seen  in  Lord  Macaulay.  Of  him  his 
biographer  writes :  —  "  The  leading  features  of  a 
tract  of  country  impressed  themselves  rapidly 
and  indelibly  on  his  observation ;  all  its  associa- 
tions and  traditions  swept  at  once  across  his 


_  <*112  SOME  OF  THE   WAYS 

memory;  and  every  line  of  good  poetry  which 
its  fame  or  its  beauty  had  inspired  rose  almost 
involuntarily  to  his  lips.  But  compared  with  the 
wealth  of  phrase  on  which  he  could  draw  at  will 
when  engaged  on  the  description  of  human  pas- 
sions, catastrophes,  and  intrigues,  his  stock  of 
epithets  applicable  to  mountains,  seas,  and  clouds 
was  singularly  scanty,  and  he  had  no  ambition  to 
enlarge  it.  When  he  had  recorded  the  fact,  that 
the  leaves  were  green,  the  sky  blue,  and  the 
plain  rich,  and  the  hills  clothed  with  wood,  he 
had  said  all  he  had  to  say,  and  there  was  an  end 
of  it."  —  That  is,  Macaulay's  imagination  was 
confined  to  human  and  historic  things,  and  was 
irresponsive  to  the  direct  touch  of  Nature. 

But  it  is  not  only  by  such  localized  history  or 
romance  as  Scott  has  given,  that  this  human 
coloring  passes  into  the  impassive  earth.  There 
is  another  more  subtle  way  in  which  it  works, 
and  it  is  this :  —  Wherever  men  have  been  upon 
the  earth,  even  when  they  have  done  no  memo- 
rable deeds,  and  left  no  history  behind  them,f 
they  have  lived  and  they  have  died,  they  have 
joyed  and  they  have  sorrowed;  and  the  sense 
that  men  have  been  there  and  disappeared  leaves 
a  pathos  on  the  face  of  many  a  now  unpeopled 
solitude. 

Those  will  know  what  I  mean  who  ever  have 
wandered  alone  through  moors  or  glens  in  the 
Higlilands,  where  once  the  old  clansmen  had  their 
homes,  but  whence  they  have  long  departed 


IN  WHICH  POETS  DEAL  WITH  NATURE.    113 

Have  they  not  felt,  as  they  gazed  on  these  wil- 
dernesses, where  perhaps  not  even  a  weathered 
gable  now  tells  of  man,  that  the  outlines  of  Nat- 
ure's lineaments  were  touched  with  pensiveneas 
indescribable  by  the  atmosphere  of  foregone  hu- 
manities that  overspread  them?  Such^are  the 
feelings  that  are  awakened  as,  far  up  inVthe  lap 
of  the  highest  Bens,  you  come  on  the  green  spots 
where  the  former  Celtic  people  had  their  sum- 
mer shielings.  In  Wordsworth's  "  Tour  in  Scot- 
land " l  it  is  noticed  feelingly,  as  we  might  ex- 
pect :  — 

"  At  the  top  of  a  mountain  encircled  by  higher 
mountains  at  a  distance,  we  were  passing  with- 
out notice  a  heap  of  scattered  stones,  round  which 
was  a  belt  of  green  grass  —  green,  and  as  it 
seemed  rich  —  where  all  else  was  either  poor 
heather  or  coarse  grass,  or  unprofitable  rushes 
and  spongy  moss.  The  Highlander  made  a  pause, 
saying,  '  This  place  is  much  changed  since  I  was 
here  twenty  years  ago.'  He  told  us  that  the 
heap  of  stones  had  been  a  hut,  where  a  family 
was  then  living,  who  had  their  winter  habitation 
in  the  valley,  and  brought  their  goats  thither  in 
the  summer  to  feed  on  the  mountains,  and  that 
they  were  used  to  gather  them  together  at  night 
and  morning  to  be  milked  close  to  the  door,  which 
was  the  reason  why  the  grass  was  yet  so  green 
near  the  stones.  It  was  affecting  in  that  solitude 
to  meet  with  this  memorial  of  manners  passed 

1  Miss  Wordsworth,  p.  228. 
8 


114  SOME  OF  THE   WAYS 

away.  We  looked  about  for  some  other  traces  of 
humanity,  but  nothing  else  could  we  find  in  that 
place." 

Again :  "  We  came  to  several  deserted  mountain 
huts  or  shiels,  and  rested  for  some  time  beside 
one  of  them,  upon  a  hillock  of  its  green  plot  of 
monumental  herbage.  The  spot  of  ground  where 
we  sat  was  even  beautiful,  the  grass  being  un- 
commonly verdant,  and  of  a  remarkably  soft  and 
silky  texture."  The  poet,  his  sister  tells,  then 
felt  how  fitting  a  subject  for  poetry  there  was  in 
those  affecting  "relics  of  human  society  found  in 
that  grand  and  solitary  region." 

^  IV.  Another  way  in  which  poets  and  others 
Ndeal  with  Nature  is  when  the  heart,  under  the 
(Stress  of  some  strong  emotion,  colors  all  Nature 
/  with  its  own  hues,  sees  all  things  in  sympathy 
\  with  its  own  mood,  making 

"  All  melodies  an  echo  of  that  voice, 
All  colors  a  suffusion  from  that  light." 

This  feeling  has  been  expressed  in  a  very  naif 
ural  way  by  Sir  Walter  Scott :  — 

"  Who  says,  that  when  the  Poet  dies 
Mute  Nature  mourns  her  worshiper,    ^ 

And  celebrates  his  obsequies ; 
Who  says,  tall  cliff  and  cavern  lone 
Por  the  departed  Bard  make  moan ; 
That  mountains  weep  in  crystal  riii ; 
That  flowers  in  tears  of  balm  distill ; 
Through  his  loved  groves  that  1 
And  oaks  in  deeper  groans  reply ; 
And  rivers  teach  their  rushing  wave 
To  murmur  dirges  round  his  grave." 


/AT   WHICH  POETS  DEAL   WITH  NATURE.    115 

This  view  of  Nature  has  been  philosophically 
condensed  into  a  single  stanza  of  Coleridge's  ode 
on  Dejection.  He  says,  that  in  looking  at  the 
outward  world 

"  We  receive  but  what  we  give, 
And  in  our  life  alone  doth  Nature  live ; 
Ours  is  the  wedding  garment,  ours  the  shroud." 

And  then  he  goes  on  to  say  that  if  in  Nature 
we  would  see 

"  Aught  of  higher  worth 

From  the  soul  itself  must  issue  forth 
A  light,  a  glory,  a  fair  luminous  mist 

Enveloping  the  Earth. 
And  from  the  soul  itself  must  there  be  sent 

A  sweet  and  potent  voice,  of  its  own  birth, 
Of  all  sweet  sounds  the  life  and  element." 

Now  the  thought  here  expressed,  false  if  taken 
as  an  adequate  explanation  of  our  whole  attitude 
towards  Nature,  is  eminently  true  of  certain 
moods  of  mind  when  we  are  under  strong  excite- 
ment. It  is  not  true  that  Nature  is  a  blank  or 
an  unintelligible  scroll,  with  no  meaning  of  its 
own  but  that  which  we  put  into  it  from  the  light 
of  our  own  transient  feelings.  But  it  is  most 
true  that  we  are  often  so  absorbed  in  our  own 
inward  moods  that  we  cannot  for  the  time  see 
anything  m  the  outward  world  but  that  which 
our  eye,  colored  by  the  emotion,  sends  into  it. 

On  this  subject  Mr.  Ruskin  discourses  elo- 
quently and  subtly  in  a  chapter  in  the  third  vol- 
ume of  his  "  Modern  Painters,"  to  which  I  would 
refer  those  interested  in  these  matters.  He  calls 


116  SOME   OF  THE   WAYS 

the  tendency  to  make  Nature   sympathize  with 
our  own  present  feelings  " 


His  view  of  the  matter  is  this  :  "  that  the  tem- 
perament which  is  subject  to  the  Pathetic  Fallacy 
is  that  of  a  mind  and  body  overborne  by  feeling, 
and  too  weak  (for  the  time)  to  deal  fully  and 
truthfully  with  what  is  before  them  or  upon 
them."  He  points  out  that  "  this  state  is  more 
»  or  less  noble  according  to  the  force  and  elevation 
of  the  emotion  which  has  caused  it;  but  at  its 
best,  if  the  poet  is  so  overpowered  as  to  color  his 
descriptions  by  it,  then  it  is  morbid  and  a  sign  of 
weakness.  For  the  emotions  have  vanquished 
the  intellect."  It  is,  he  says,  "  a  higher  order  of 
mind,  in  which  the  intellect  rises  and  asserts  itself 
along  with  the  utmost  tension  of  passion,  and 
when  the  whole  man  can  stand  in  an  iron  glow, 
white  hot,  perhaps,  but  still  strong,  and  in  no 
wise  evaporating;  even  if  he  melts,  losing  none 
of  his  weight."  Mr.  Ruskin  further  says  (p. 
164),  "  There  are  four  classes  of  men  —  the  men 
who  feel  nothing,  and  therefore  see  truly.  [He 
might  rather  have  said,  and  therefore  see  noth- 
ing.] The  men  who  feel  strongly,  think  weakly, 
and  see  untruly  (second  order  of  poets).  The 
men  who  feel  strongly,  think  strongly,  and  see 
truly  (first  order  of  poets).  And  the  men  who, 
strong  as  human  creatures  can  be,  are  yet  sub- 
mitted to  influences  stronger  than  they,  and  see 
in  a  sort  untruly,  because  what  they  see  is  incon- 
ceivably above  them."  This  last  he  calls  "the 
usual  condition  of  prophetic  inspiration." 


IN   WHICH  POETS  DEAL    WITH  NATURE.    117 

It  will  be  conceded  to  Mr.  Ruskin  that  it  is 
not  the  highest  order  of  poet  who,  as  he  looks  out 
on  Nature,  is  so  overmastered  by  his  emotions  as 
to  be  continually  coloring  it  with  his  own  mental 
hues.  It  is  higher  to  feel  intensely  and  still 
think  truly,  than  merely  to  feel  intensely  with- 
out true  thought.  But  Mr.  Ruskin  would  allow 
that  for  the  poet,  whether  dramatic,  epic,  or  other, 
to  represent  his  characters  as  coloring  the  world 
with  their  own  excited  feelings,  is  neither  falsity 
nor  weakness,  but  is  merely  keeping  true  to  a 
fact  of  human  nature.  Numerous  instances  of 
this  will  occur  to  every  one.  Take  one  from 
Shakespeare's  delineations  of  character.  Ariel, 
breaking  through  the  elements  and  powers  of 
Nature,  quickens  the  remorse  of  Alens^rMng__of_ 
Naples,  for  a  crime  committed  twelve  years  be- 
fore, till  the  sounds  of  Nature  become  the  voice 
of  conscience  — 

"  Methought  the  billows  spoke  and  told  me  of  it ; 
The  winds  did  sing  it  to  me,  and  the  thunder, 
That  deep  and  dreadful  organ-pipe,  pronounced 
The  name  of  Prosper  :  it  did  bass  my  trespass, 
Therefore  my  son  i'  the  ooze  is  bedded,  and 
I'll  seek  him  deeper  than  e'er  plummet  sounded, 
And  with  him  there  lie  mudded." 

V.  Connected  with  this  last  mode  of  treating 
Nature,  but  connected  in  the  way  of  contrast,  is 
what  I  may  call  the  Inhuman  and  Infinite  side  of 
Nature  —  that  side  which  yields  no  response  to 
man's  yearnings,  and  refuses  to  make  itself  plas- 
tic under  even  the  strongest  power  of  emotion. 


118  SOME  OF  THE    WAYS 

For  as  I  have  elsewhere  said,1  outside  of  and  be- 
yond man,  aloof  from  his  warm  hopes  and  fears, 
his  joy  and  sorrow,  his  strivings  and  aspirations, 
there  lies  the  vast  immensity  of  Nature's  forces, 
which  pays  him  no  homage  and  yields  him  no 
sympathy.  This  aspect  of  Nature  may  be  seen 
even  in  the  tamest  landscape,  if  we  look  to  the 
clouds  or  the  stars  above  us,  or  to  the  ocean- 
waves  that  roar  around  our  shores  — 

"  Those  clouds  that  far  above  us  float  and  pause, 
Whose  pathless  march  no  mortal  may  control, 
Those  ocean-waves  that,  wheresoe'er  they  roll, 
Yield  homage  only  to  eternal  l 


But  nowhere  is  it  so  borne  in  upon  man  as  in  the 
wilderness  where  no  man  is,  in  the  presence  of 
the  great  mountains  which  seem  so  impassive  and 
unchangeable.  Their  strength  and  permanence 
so  contrast  with  man,  of  few  years  and  full  of 
trouble  —  they  are  altogether  heedless  of  his  feel- 
ings or'  his  destiny.  He  may  smile  or  weep,  he 
may  live  or  die;  they  care  not.  They  are  the 
same  in  all  their  ongoings,  come  what  may  to 
him.  They  respond  to  the  sunrises  and  the  sun- 
sets, but  not  to  his  emotions.  All  the  same  they 
fulfill  their  mighty  functions,  careless  though  no 
human  eye  should  ever  look  on  them.  Man's 
heart  may  be  full  of  gladness,  yet  Nature  frowns  : 
he  goes  forth  from  the  death-chamber,  and  Nat- 
ure affronts  him  with  sunshine  and  the  song  of 
birds  — 

1  Essay  on  Keble. 


IN  WHICH  POETS  DEAL   WITH  NATURE.    119 

"  Nature,  an  infinite,  unfeeling  power 
From  some  great  centre  moving  evermore, 
Keepeth  no  festal-day  when  man  is  born, 
And  hath  no  tears  for  his  mortality.*' 

It  seems  as  though  she  inarched  on,  having  a  pur- 
pose of  her  own  inaccessible  to  man ;  she  keeps 
her  own  secret,  and  drops  no  hint  to  him.  Thi? 
side  of  things,  whether  philosophically  or  imagi- 
natively regarded,  seems  to  justify  the  saying 
that  "  the  visible  world  still  remains  without  its 
divine  interpretation."  And  though  inexplica- 
ble, perhaps  for  its  very  inexplicability,  this  mys- 
terious silence,  this  inexorable  deafness,  this  in- 
human indifference  of  Nature,  has  oppressed  the  \  / 
imagination  of  some  of  the  greatest  poets  with 
a  vague  but  sublime  awe.  The  sense  of  it  lay 
heavy  on  Lucretius  and  Shelley,  sometimes  on 
Wordsworth,  and  drew  out  of  their  souls  some  of 
the  profoundest  music.  At  the  present  time, 
perhaps  from  the  increased  scientific  knowledge 
of  Nature's  processes,  this  contrast  between  the 
warm  and  tender  human  heart,  and  the  cold  and 
impassive,  almost  relentless,  elements,  more  than 
ever  before  dominates  the  imaginations  of  men. 

VI.  A  sixth  mode  of  poetically  treating  Nature 
is  that  which  we  meet  with  in  purely  descriptive 
poetry.  In  Hesiod,  in  Theocritus,  in  the  Georg- 
ics  of  Virgil,  among  the  ancients,  we  have  exam- 
ples of  pure  description  interwoven  in  didactic  and 
idyllic  poetry ;  but  it  is  in  modern  times  that  this 


120  SOME   OF  THE    WATS 

kind  of  poetry  has  chiefly  asserted  itself.  The 
most  striking  example  of  it  is  Thomson's  "  Sea- 
sons." There  we  find  that  man  is  quite  subordi* 
nate,  and  only  comes  in  to  set  off  Nature  and  its 
appearances,  which  form  the  main  object  of  the 
poem.  As  it  may  seem  to  be  one  of  the  simplest 
ways  of  treating  Nature,  merely  to  describe  it,  — 
to  picture  what  the  eye  sees  and.  the  ear  hears,  — 
faithfully  to  reproduce  the  forms  and  colors  of 
things,  the  movements  and  the  sounds  which  per- 
vade them  —  perhaps  some  may  think  it  should 
have  been  the  earliest  method.  But  as  a  fact, 
this  kind  of  poetry,  which  seems  so  simple,  is  the 

/product  only  of  a  late  age.     Ea^ly 


ever  handle  Nature^except^tp  interweave  it  with 
human  ajstion^andjemotion^  and  as^get-off  against 
the  life  of  man.  To  regard  it  by  itself,  and  as) 
exisiing~apart  from  man,  is  the  mental  attitude 
of  a  late  and  cultivated  time,  even  though  the 
descriptions  may  seem  to  be  plain  and  unadorned. 
Since  writing  these  sentences,  I  have  read  in 
Mr.  Stopford  Brooke's  admirable  "English  Lit- 
erature Primer  "  a  passage  in  which  he  attributes 
the  earliest  efforts  at  poetry  of  natural  descrip- 
tion to  Scotch  poets,  and  among  these  especially 
to  Gawain  Douglas,  early  in  the  sixteenth  cent- 
ury; and  then  he,  in  another  place,  points  out 
how,  when  this  kind  of  poetry  came  prominently 
forward  in  more  modern  times,  it  was  a  Scottish 
poet  who  led  the  way  in  it.  This  is  what  he 
says  :  — 


<  IN  WHICH  POETS  DEAL    WITH  NATURE.    121 

"  Natural  scenery  had  been  hitherto  only  used 
as  a  background  to  the  picture  of  human  life.  It 
now  (that  is,  in  the  first  thirty  years  of  the 
eighteenth  century)  began  to  take  a  much  larger 
place  in  poetry,  and,  after  a  time,  grew  to  occupy ' 
a  distinct  place  of  its  own  apart  from  man.  The 
best  natural  description  we  have  before  the  time 
of  Pope  is  that  of  two  Puritans,  Marvell  and 
Milton.  But  the  first  poem  devoted  to  natural 
description  appeared  while  Pope  was  yet  alive,  in 
the  very  midst  of  a  vigorous  town  poetry.  It 
was  the  "Seasons,"  1726-30;  and  it  is  curious, 
remembering  what  I  have  said  about  the  peculiar 
turn  of  the  Scotch  for  natural  description,  that 
it  was  the  work  of  James  Thomson,  a  Scotchman. 
He  described  the  scenery  and  country-life  of 
Spring,  Summer,  Autumn,  and  Winter.  He  wrote 
with  his  eye  upon  their  scenery,  and,  even  when 
he  wrote  of  it  in  his  room,  it  was  with  "  a  recol- 
lected love."  The  descriptions  were  too  much 
like  catalogues,  the  very  fault  of  the  previous 
Scotch  poets;  and  his  style  was  always  heavy, 
and  often  cold,  but  he  was  the  first  poet  who  led 
the  English  people  into  that  new  world  of  nature 
in  poetry,  which  has  moved  and  enchanted  us  irr: 
the  works  of  Wordsworth,  Shelley,  Keats,  and 
Tennyson,  but  which  was  entirely  impossible  for 
Pope  to  understand.  The  impulse  Thomson  gave  ' 
was  soon  followed." 

In   our  own  day  such  poetic  descriptions  of 
Nature  have  burst  the  bonds  of  metre  altogether, 


122  SOME  OF  THE   WAYS 

and  filled  many  a  splendid  page  of  poetic  or  im- 
aginative prose.  Many  instances  of  this  will 
occur  to  every  one.  Preeminent  among  these  are 
Mr.  Raskin's  elaborate  word-pictures  of  natural 
scenery. 

But  of  all  poetic  description  of  Nature,  it  may 
be  said  that  if  it  is  to  reach  any  high  level  it 
cannot  proceed  calmly  and  unexcitedly  after  the 
manner  of  an  inventory.  No  eye  can  see  deeply 
into  the  meaning  of  Nature  unless  it  has  also 
looked  as  deeply  into  the  recesses  of  the  human 
heart,  and  felt  the  full  gravity  of  man's  life  and 
destiny.  It  is  only  when  seen  over  against  these 
that  Nature  renders  back  her  profounder  tones. 

VII.  There  is  another  way  in  which  the  poet 
deals  with  the  external  world,  —  when  he  enters  / 
into  the  life  and  the  movement  of  Nature  by  a  i 
kind   of   imaginative    sympathy,   and  brings   it  V 
home   to   us   by  one   stroke,  .flashing  upon   our  4. 
hearts  by  one  touch,  one  inspired  line,  a  sense  of 
the  inner  life  of  things,  and  a  conviction  that  he 
has  been  allowed  for  a  moment  to  penetrate  into 
their  secret.     This,  which  has  been  called,  in  a 
special  way,  the  interpretative  power  of  Poetry, 
is  that  in  which  it  reaches  its  highest  function, 
and  exercises  one  of  its  finest  offices  of  mediation 
between  the  soul  of  man  and  Nature. 

No  one,  as  far  as  I  know,  has  seen  this  aspect 
of  Poetry  more  truly,  or  expressed  it  so  felici- 
tously, as  my  friend  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold.  If 


IN  WHICH  POETS  DEAL   WITH  NATURE.    123 

he  has  not  been  the  first  to  notice  it,  he  has  cer- 
tainly dwelt  on  it  with  more  emphasis  than  any 
previous  writer,  as  far  as  I  know.  For  his  views 
on  this  subject  I  would  refer  to  his  delightful 
Essay  on  Maurice  de  Gu£rin,  in  his  volume  en- 
titled "  Essays  on  Criticism." 

As  it  is  well  to  give  a  good  thought  in  its  best 
possible  form,  Mr.  Arnold  will,  I  know,  forgive 
me  if  I  quote  at  length  his  own  words.  He 
says :  — 

"  The  grand  power  of  Poetry  is  its  interpreta- 
tive power,  by  which  I  mean,  not  the  power  of 
drawing  out  in  black  and  white  an  explanation 
of  the  mystery  of  the  Universe,  but  the  power 
of  so  dealing  with  things  as  to  awaken  in  us  a 
wonderfully  full,  new,  and  intimate  sense  of 
them,  and  of  our  relations  with  them.  When 
this  sense  is  awakened  in  us  as  to  objects  without 
us,  we  feel  ourselves  to  be  in  contact  with  the 
essential  nature  of  those  objects,  to  be  no  longer' 
bewildered  and  oppressed  by  them,  but  to  havei 
their  secret,  and  to  be  in  harmony  with  them ; 
and  this  feeling  calms  and  satisfies  us  as  no  other 

can Poetry  indeed  interprets  in  another 

way  besides  this  ;  but  one  of  its  two  ways  of  in- 
terpreting is  by  awakening  this  sense  in  us.  The 
interpretations  of  Science  do  not  give  us  this  in- 
timate sense  of  objects  as  the  interpretations  of 
Poetry  give  it ;  they  appeal  to  a  limited  faculty, 
and  not  to  the  whole  man." 

Again  Mr.  Arnold  says :  — 


124  SOME  OF  THE    WAYS 

"  Poetry  interprets  in  two  ways  :  it  interprets 
by  expressing  with  magical  felicity  the  physiog- 
nomy and  movement  of  the  outward  world,  and 
it  interprets  by  expressing,  with  inspired  convic- 
tion, the  ideas  and  laws  of  the  inward  world  of 
man's  moral  and  spiritual  nature.  In  other 
words,  Poetry  is  interpretative  by  having  natural 
magic  in  it,  and  by  having  moral  profundity.  In 
both  ways  it  illuminates  man ;  it  gives  him  a 
satisfying  sense  of  reality ;  it  reconciles  him  with 
himself  and  the  Universe.  The  greatest  poets 
unite  in  themselves  the  faculty  of  both  kinds  of 
interpretation,  the  naturalistic  and  the  moral. 
But  it  is  observable  that  in  the  poets  who  unite 
both  kinds,  the  latter  (the  moral)  usually  ends 
by  making  itself  the  master.  In  Shakespeare 
the  two  kinds  seem  wonderfully  to  balance  each 
other;  but  even  in  him  the  balance  leans;  hia 
expression  tends  to  become  too  little  sensuous 
and  simple,  too  much  intellectualized.  The  same 
thing  may  be  yet  more  strongly  affirmed  of  Lu- 
cretius and  of  Wordsworth." 

It  is  not,  however,  with  moral  but  with  natu- 
ralistic interpretation  that  we  have  now  to  cfoT 
And  in  this  faculty  of  naturalistic  interpreta- 
tion, perhaps  no  poet  —  certainly  no  modern  poet 
—  equals  Keats.  In  him,  as  Mr.  Arnold  says, 
"  the  faculty  is  overpos^jngly  predominant.  The 
natural  magic  is  perfect ;  when  he  speaks  of  the 
outward  world  he  speaks  almost  like  Adam  nam- 
ing, by  Divine  inspiration,  the  creatures  ;  his  ex- 


IN   WHICH  POETS  DEAL   WITH  NATURE.    125 

pression   corresponds  with   the  thing's  essential 
reality." 


Joes  not  Keats  thus  bring  home  to  us  the 
meaning — the  inner  secret  — of  the  ocean,  and 
the  impression  it  makes  on  the  human  heart, 
when  he  speaks  of 

"  The  voice  mysterious,  which  whoso  hears 
Must  think  on  what  will  be,  and  what  has  been  ?  " 

It  is  he  that  interprets  the  meaning  of  the 
summer  midnight  among  the  woods,  when  he 

says  — 

"  Upon  a  tranced  summer  night 
Those  green-robed  senators  of  mighty  woods, 
Tall  oaks,  branch-charmed  by  the  earnest  stars, 
Dream,  and  so  dream  all  night  without  a  stir, 
Save  from  one  gradual  solitary  gust 
Which  comes  upon  the  silence,  and  dies  off, 
As  if  the  ebbing  air  had  but  one  wave." 

Or  take  one  more  instance.  All  know  the 
stern,  almost  grim,  fueling  of  solitude  about  some 
little  crag-engirdled  lochan  or  tarn  far  up  the 
heart  of  a  Highland  mountain.  Who  has  given 
this  feeling  of  grim  solitude,  so  death-like  that 
any  living  thing  or  sound  startles  you  there,  as 
Wordsworth,  by  these  two  strokes  ?  — 

"  There  sometimes  doth  a  leaping  fish 

Send  through  the  tarn  a  lonely  cheer ; 
The  crags  repeat  the  raven's  croak 
In  symphony  austere." 

Or  again,  who  has  not  felt  as  though  he  had  a 
new  revelation  made  to  him  about  the  starry  sky 
and  the  mountain-stillness  after  reading  for  the 
first  time  these  two  well-known  lines  ?  — 


126  SOME  OF  THE   WAYS 

"  The  silence  that  is  in  the  starry  sky, 
The  sleep  that  is  among  the  lonely  hills." 

Or  once  more :  who  has  so  called  up  the  im- 
pression produced  by  the  sound  of  waters  heard 
among  the  mountains  as  Wordsworth,  when  he 
thus  speaks  ?  — 

"  In  mute  repose 

To  lie  and  listen  to  the  mountain-flood 
Murmuring  from  Glaramara's  inmost  caves." 

But  I  hkve  dwelt  too  long  on  this  aspect  of 
Poetry,  its  penetrating  power  of  naturalistic  in- 
terpretation when  the  poet, 

"  With  an  eye  made  quiet  by  the  power 
Of  harmony  and  the  deep  power  of  joy," 

is  given  to  see  into  the  life  of  things,  and  seeing, 
makes  us  share  his  insight,  makes  us  partakers 
for  a  moment  at  least  in 

"  That  blessed  mood 
In  which  the  burthen  of  the  mystery, 
In  which  the  heavy  and  the  weary  weight 
Of  all  this  unintelligible  world 
Is  lightened." 

Even  if  it  be  but  a  transient  glance,  a  moment- 
ary lightening  of  the  burden  that  he  lends  us,  it 
is  one  of  the  most  intimate  and  delicate  services 
—  one  of  the  highest  and  rarest  functions  which 
the  poet  or  any  man  can  perform. 

VIII.  Once  more :  the  last  and  highest  way  in 
which  Nature  ministers  to  the  soul  and  spirit  of 
man  is  when  it  becomes  to  him  a  symbol  trans- 
lucent with  the  light  of  the  moral  and  spiritual 


fN  WHICH  POETS  DEAL   WITH  NATURE.    127 

world.  Or,  in  other  words,  the  highest  use  to 
which  Imagination  can  put  this  visible  world  is,  to 
gather  from  it  some  tidings  of  the  world  invisible. 
This  use  is  seen  when  the  sights  and  sounds  of 
Nature,  coming  in  through  eye  and  ear  to  the 
soul,  hint  at  and  foreshow  "  a  higher  life  than  this 
daily  one,  a  brighter  world  than  that  we  see." 
It  is  Coleridge  who  has  said  that  "  it  has  been 
the  music  of  gentle  and  pious  minds  in  all  ages, 
it  is  the  poetry  of  all  human  life,  to  read  the  book 
of  Nature  in  a  figurative  sense,  and  to  find  therein 
correspondences  and  symbols  of  the  spiritual 
world."  That  this  is  no  mere  fanciful  use  to 
make  of  Nature,  that  in  cultivating  the  habit  of 
thus  reading  it  we  are  cultivating  a  power  which 
is  grounded  in  reason  and  the  truth  of  things,  can 
hardly  be  doubted,  if  we  believe  that  the  things 
we  see,  and  the  mind  that  sees  them,  have  one 
common  origin,  come  from  one  Universal  Mind, 
which  gives  being  to  and  upholds  both  alike. 
This  seeing  of  spiritual  truths  mirrored  in  the 
face  of  Nature  rests  not  on  any  fancied,  but  in  a 
real  analogy  between  the  natural  and  the  spiritual 
worlds.  They  are,  in  some  sense  which  Science 
has  not  ascertained,  but  which  the  vital  and  relig- 
ious imagination  can  perceive,  counterparts  the 
one  of  the  other  The  highest  authority  for  this 
belief,  as  well  as  its  truest  exemplification,  we 
have  in  the  Parables  of  our  Lord.  It  was  on 
this  truth  that  He  grounded  a  large  part  of  hia 
teaching. 


128  SOME  OF  THE    WAYS 

I  need  but  allude  to  what  is  so  familiar  ;  only 
let  us,  before  we  pass  on,  think  of  what  is  im- 
plied in  this  teaching,  which  we  have  all  known 
from  our  childhood,  —  the  growth  of  the  Divine 
life  in  the  soul  represented  by  the  growth  of  the 
corn  seed  in  the  furrow,  the  end  of  the  world  or 
of  this  aeon  set  forth  by  the  reapers  and  the  har- 
vest. Simple  as  this  teaching  is,  level  to  the 
child's  capacity,  it  yet  involves  a  truth  that  lies 
deeper  than  any  philosopher  has  yet  penetrated, 
even  the  hidden  bond  that  connects  things  visible 
with  things  invisible. 

Archbishop  Trench  has  said  well  on  this  sub- 
ject:1—  ''On  this  rests  the  possibility  of  a  real 
and  not  a  merely  arbitrary  teaching  by  Parables 
—  that  the  world  of  Nature  is  throughout  a  wit- 
ness for  the  world  of  spirit,  proceeding  from  the 
same  hand,  growing  out  of  the  same  root,  and 
constituted  for  that  very  end.  All  lovers  of  truth 
readily  acknowledge  these  mysterious  harmonies. 
To  them  the  things  on  earth  are  copies  of  the 
things  in  heaven.  They  know  that  the  earthly 
tabernacle  is  made  after  the  pattern  of  things 
seen  in  the  Mount,  and  the  question  of  the  Angel 
in  Milton  often  forces  itself  on  their  medita- 
tions — 

'  What  if  earth 

Be  but  the  shadow  of  heaven,  and  things  therein 
Each  to  other  like,  more  than  on  earth  is  thought  ?  '  " 

But  to  leave  these  heights  of  inspired  teaching, 
i  Trench  on  Parabks,  p.  13. 


/AT  WHICH  POETS  DEAL    WITH  NATURE.    129 

we  find  everywhere  the  more  meditative  poets 
deriving  from  visible  Nature  hints  at  that  which  j 
eye  has  not  seen  nor  ear  heard.  One  of  the  sim- 
plest and  most  child-like  instances  of  this  that 
occurs  to  me  is  that  beautiful  thought  of  Isaac 
Walton :  — 

"  How  joyed  my  heart  in  the  rich  melodies 

That  overhead  and  round  me  did  arise  ! 

The  moving  leaves  —  the  waters'  gentle  flow  — 

Delicious  music  hung  on  every  bough. 

Then  said  I,  in  my  heart,  If  that  the  Lord 

Such  lovely  music  on  the  earth  accord ; 

If  to  weak  sinful  man  such  sounds  are  given  — 

Oh !  what  must  be  the  melody  of  Heaven !  " 

Something  of  the  same  thought  comes  out  in 
a  more  reflective  way  in  many  of  the  poems  of 
Henry  Vaughan,1  a  writer  of  the  same  age  as 
Walton,  and  one,  like  him,  now  less  known  and 
read  than  he  deserves  to  be.  Take  the  following, 
in  which  Vaughan  speaks  of  the  vivid  insight 
of  his  childhood  in  a  strain  in  which  some  have 
thought  that  they  overheard  the  first  note  of  that 
tone  which  Wordsworth  has  sounded  more  fulh 
in  his  "  Ode  on  the  Intimations  of  Immortality. 
It  is  thus  Vaughan  speaks  of  his  childhood :  — 

"  Happy  those  early  days  when  I 
Shined  in  my  angel-infancy ; 
When  yet  I  had  not  walked  above 
A  mile  or  two  from  my  first  love, 
And  looking  back,  at  that  short  space, 
Could  see  a  glimpse,  of  His  bright  face  • 
When  on  some  gilded  cloud  or  flower 
My  gazing  soul  would  dwell  an  hour, 

i  Born  1621,  died  1695. 
9 


130  SOME  OF  THE   WAYS 

And  in  those  weaker  glories  spy- 
Some  shadows  of  eternity ; 
And  feel  through  all  this  fleshly  dress 
Bright  shootes  of  everlastingness." 

Such  thoughts  may  be  deemed  by  some  to  be 
fanciful  and  not  practical.  Certainly  they  are 
not  much  in  vogue  at  the  present  time.  But  as 
one  has  said,  "  I  cannot  conceive  a  use  of  our 
knowledge  more  practical  than  to  make  it  con- 
nect the  sight  of  this  world  with  the  thought  of 
another."  Nor  can  any  be  more  needed  by  us, 
or  more  consolatory.  For  is  it  not  the  experience 
of  each  individual  as  he  grows  more  thoughtful, 
as  well  as  the  experience  of  the  race,  that  the 
visible,  the  outward,  cannot  satisfy  ?  Is  it  not 
the  very  best  element  in  man  that  makes  him 
feel  forever  after  something  higher,  deeper,  more 
enduring  than  the  things  he  sees  ?  If  we  turn 
aside  from  this  tendency,  and  seek  to  quench  it, 
we  do  so  at  the  cost  of  destroying  that  which  is 
the  best,  the  noblest  inheritance  of  our  human- 
ity, —  the  piece  of  divinity  in  us. 

This  suggestive  power  of  Nature,  and  its  un- 
sufficingness,  have  been  felt  by  all  men  who 
have  any  glimpse  of  the  ideal  in  them ;  by  none 
has  it  been  more  deeply  felt,  or  more  adequately 
expressed,  than  by  him,  the  great  preacher  — 
poet  as  well  as  preacher  —  of  our  age.  I  mean, 
Dr.  Newman.  As  the  prose  words  in  which  he 
expresses  this  feeling  are  in  the  highest  sense 
poetry,  I  cannot,  I  think,  do  better  than  give  the 


IN  WHICH  POETS  DEAL  WITH  NATURE.    131 

thought  in  his   own  perfect  language.     He  is 
speaking  in  the  opening  of  Spring :  — 

"  Let  these  be  your  thoughts,  especially  in  this 
Spring  season,  when  the  whole  face  of  Nature  is 
so  rich  and  beautiful.  Once  only  in  the  year 
yet  once,  does  the  world  which  we  see  show  forth 
its  hidden  powers,  and  in  a  manner  manifest  it- 
self. Then  there  is  a  sudden  rush  and  burst  out- 
wardly of  that  hidden  life  which  God  has  lodged 
in  the  material  world.  Well,  that  shows  you,  as 
by  a  sample,  what  it  can  do  at  his  command, 
when  He  gives  the  word.  This  earth  which  now 
buds  forth  in  leaves  and  blossoms,  will  one  day 
burst  forth  into  a  new  world  of  light  and  glory. 
Who  would  think,  except  from  his  experience  of 
former  Springs  all  through  his  life,  who  could 
conceive  two  or  three  months  before  that  it  was 
possible  that  the  face  of  Nature,  which  then 
seemed  so,  lifeless,  should  become  so  splendid 
and  varied?  How  different  is  a  prospect  when 
leaves  are  on  it,  and  off  it !  How  unlikely  it 
would  seem  before  the  event  that  the  dry  and 
naked  branches  should  suddenly  be  clothed  with 
what  is  so  bright  and  so  refreshing!  Yet  in 
God's  good  time  leaves  come  on  the  trees.  The 
season  may  delay,  but  come  it  will  at  last. 

"  So  it  is  with  the  coming  of  that  eternal  Spring 
for  which  all  Christians  are  waiting.  Come  it 
will,  though  it  delay.  Therefore  we  say  day  by 
day,  Thy  kingdom  come ;  which  means,  O  Lcrd, 
show  thyself — manifest  thyself.  The  earth  that 


132  SOME  OF  THE    WAYS 

we  see  does  not  satisfy  us  ;  it  is  but  a  beginning ; 
it  is  but  a  promise  of  something  beyond  it ;  even 
when  it  is  gayest,  with  all  its  blossoms  on,  and 
shows  most  touchingly  what  lies  hid  in  it,  yet  it 
is  not  enough.  We  know  much  more  lies  hid  in 
it  than  we  see What  we  see  is  the  out- 
ward shell  of  an  eternal  kingdom,  and  on  that 

kingdom  we   fix  the   eyes   of   our   faith 

Bright  as  is  the  sun  and  sky  and  the  clouds, 
green  as  are  the  leaves  and  the  fields,  sweet  as  is 
the  singing  of  the  birds,  we  know  that  they  are 
not  all,  and  we  'will  &ot  take  up  with  a  part  for 
the  whole.  They  proceed  from  a  centre  of  love 
and  goodness,  which  is  God  himself,  but  they  are 
not  his  fullness ;  they  speak  of  heaven,  but  they 
are  not  heaven ;  they  are  but  as  stray  beams  and 
dim  reflections  of  his  image ;  they  are  but  crumbs 
from  the  table.  We  are  looking  for  the  coming 
of  the  day  of  God,  when  all  this  outward  world, 

fair  though  it  be,  shall   perish We  can 

bear  the  loss,  for  we  know  it  will  be  but  the 
lemoving  of  a  veil.  We  know,  that  to  remove 
the  world  which  is  seen  will  be  the  manifestation 
of  the  world  which  is  not  seen.  We  know  that 
what  we  see  is  a  screen  hiding  from  us  God  and 
Christ,  and  his  saints  and  angels ;  and  we  ear- 
nestly desire  and  pray  for  the  dissolution  of  all 
that  we  see,  from  our  longing  after  that  which 
we  do  not  see." 

Such  are  the  thoughts  and  longings  which  the 
sight  of  the  vernal  earth  can  awaken  in  a  «jpirifc* 
ual  mind  well  used  to  heavenly  meditation? 


IN  WHICH  POETS  DEAL    WITH  NATURE.    133 

If  some  of  us  are  so  sense-bound  that  such 
thoughts  seem  fantastic  and  unreal  to  them,  all 
that  can  be  said  is,  The  more  's  the  pity.  Even 
the  best  among  us  will  probably  not  venture  to 
appropriate  such  thoughts  as  if  these  were  our 
habitual  companions,  but  they  may  have  in  some 
brighter  moments  known  them.  At  all  events 
they  know  what  they  mean,  and  are  assured  that 
as  they  themselves  grow  in  spirituality,  the  beauty 
that  clothes  this  visible  world,  while  it  soothes, 
does  not  suffice,  but  becomes  more  and  more  the 
hint  and  prophecy  of  a  higher  beauty  which  their 
heart  longs  for. 

And  now,  in  looking  back  on  these  several 
ways  in  which  poets  have  handled  Nature,  two 
thoughts  suggest  themselves  :  — 

1.  The  ways  I  have  noted  are  far  from  exhaust- 
ing all  the  possible  or  even  actual  modes  in  which 
poets  deal  with  Nature,  or,  in  other  words,  in 
which  Nature  lends  itself  to  the  poet's  service. 
They  are  but  a  few  of  the  most  prominent  and 
obvious.    It  may  interest  some  to  look  for  others, 
and  to  add  them  to  the  classification  here  given. 

2.  Though  one  mode  may  be  more  prominent 
in  one  poet,  and  one  in  another,  yet  no  poet  is 
limited  to  only  one,  or  even  two,  of  these  several 
ways  of  adapting  Nature  to  his  purposes.     In  the 
works  of  the  greatest  poets,  those  of  largest  and 
most  varied  range,  perhaps  every  one  of  these 
modes,  and  more  besides,  may  be  found.    To  find 
out  and  arrange  under  heads  all  the  ways  in  which 


134  SOME  OF  THE  WAYS 

say  Shakespeare  and  Milton  deal  with  Nature, 
would  be  an  interesting  study  for  any  one  who  is 
young,  and  has  leisure  for  it. 

With  one  reflection  I  close  this  part  of  my  sub- 
ject. Any  one  who  has  ever  been  brought  to 
meditate  on  the  relation  which  the  abstractions 
of  mathematics  bear  to  the  Laws  of  Nature  must 
have  felt  how  exceeding  wonderful  it  is.  A  sys- 
tem of  thought  evoked  out  of  pure  intelligence 
has  been  found  reflected  and,  as  it  were,  embodied 
in  the  actual  movements  of  the  heavenly  bodies, 
and  bringing  the  whole  Physical  Cosmos  within 
the  power  of  man's  thought  — 

"  From  star  to  star,  from  kindred  sphere  to  sphere, 
From  system  on  to  system,  without  end." 

Such  a  one,  I  say,  must  have  been  filled  with 
wonder  at  this  marvelous  adaptation  and  corre- 
spondence between  the  mind  of  transitory  man 
and  the  vast  movements  of  the  most  remote  and 
permanent  of  material  things. 

A  like,  though  a  different,  wonder  must  arise 
when  we  reflect  how,  in  the  various  modes  above 
noted,  and  no  doubt  in  many  more,  outward  Nat- 
ure lends  itself  to  be  the  material  in  which  so 
many  of  man's  highest  thoughts  and  emotions 
can  work  and  embody  themselves. 

Of  the  poets  and  this  visible  world  we  may 
truly  say, — 

"  They  took  the  whole  earth  for  their  toy, 

They  played  with  it  in  every  mood ; 
A  cell  for  prayer,  a  hall  for  joy, 
They  treated  Nature  as  they  would." 


IN  WHICH  POETS  DEAL  WITH  NATURE.    135 

He  who  has  once  perceived  the  wonderful 
adaptation  which  exists  between  the  mind  of  man 
and  the  external  world — how  exquisitely  the  in- 
dividual mind,  as  well  as  the  mind  of  the  race,  is 
fitted  to  the  world,  and  the  external  world  fitted 
to  the  mind,  —  if  he  has-  once  vividly  felt  the 
reality  of  this  adaptation,  he  must  have  paused 
in  wonder  at  himself,  and  at  the  world  that  en- 
compasses him,  and  become  penetrated  with  an 
immediate  conviction,  deeper  than  all  arguments 
can  reach,  that  the  reasonable  soul  within  him, 
and  the  material  world  without  him,  which  on  so 
many  sides  is  seen  to  be  the  embodiment  of  rea- 
son, and  which  yields  up  its  secret  to  man's  in- 
telligence, and  is  so  plastic  to  his  imagination 
and  emotions,  —  that  these  two  existences  so 
Bwering  to  each  other,  and  so  strangely  commun- 
ing with  each  other,  are  both  rooted  in  the  one 
Central  and  Universal  Intelligence  which  em- 
braces and  upholds  both  Nature  and  Man. 


CHAPTER  IX. 
NATUKE  IN  HEBREW  POETRY,  AND  IN  HOMER. 

THE  method  pursued  in  this  book  has  been, 
beginning  with  some  general  views,  from  these  to 
descend  to  special  illustrations,  in  order  to  exem- 
plify what  has  been  said  of  Poetry  in  a  general 
way,  by  pointing  to  the  several  methods  which 
the  poets  have  actually  followed  in  delineating 
Nature  and  her  aspects. 

It  will  be  but  to  carry  out  somewhat  more  in 
detail  the  same  procedure  if  I  now  adduce  a  few 
samples  of  the  way  in  vhich  some  of  the  greatest 
poets  of  each  age  arid  country  have  in  their  works 
shown  their  feeling  towards  Nature.  To  exhaust 
this  subject  would  require  a  large  treatise.  A 
chapter  or  two  is  all  that  can  here  be  afforded  to 
it.  In  glancing  thus,  which  is  all  we  can  do,  at 
a  few  of  the  great  mountain-summits  of  song, 
many  a  lesser  elevation  in  the  long  line  of  poetry, 
that  might  well  repay  attention,  must  needs  be 
passed  in  silence.  I  shall  begin  with  the  earliest 
poets  we  know,  and  come  down  to  those  near  our 
pwn  time.  In  such  a  survey  it  is  to  the  East 
that  the  eye  naturally  turns,  and  there  especially 
to  the  singers  of  Israel ;  for,  as  to  the  view  of 


NATURE  IN  HEBREW  POETRY.          137 

Nature  which  the  Hindu  Vedas  may  contain,  this 
is  a  subject  on  which  I  do  not  venture,  since  at 
best  I  could  but  repeat  at  second-hand  what  others 
have  said. 

In  considering  the  views  of  Nature  presented 
by  Hebrew  poetry,  it  is  not  to  the  account  of  the 
creation  in  Genesis  that  we  turn,  but  to  the  many 
passages  in  the  Psalms,  the  Prophets,  and  the 
Book  of  Job,  in  which  the  aspects  of  the  outward 
world,  as  they  appeared  to  those  old  seers,  are 
delineated.  Humboldt  and  ni^ny  others  have  re- 
marked that  the  description  by  the  Hebrew  Poets 
of  the  material  world  everywhere  reflects  their 
faith  in  the  unity  of  God,  and  in  his  immediate 
presence  in  all  creation.  The  world  is  described, 
not  so  much  in  detail,  but  as  a  whole,  in  its  vast 
expanses  and  great  movements  ;  or,  if  individual 
objects  are  dwelt  on,  as  in  the  Book  of  Job,  it  is 
as  the  visible  witnesses  to  the  transcendent  power 
of  the  Invisible  One.  Nature  is  nowhere  spoken 
of  as  an  independent  and  self-subsistent  power, . 
but  rather  as  the  outer  chamber  of  an  Unseen  | 
Presence  —  a  garment,  a  veil,  which  the  Eternal  - 
One  is  ever  ready  to  break  through.  These  char- 
acteristics, which  pervade  the  entire  poetry  of 
the  Old  Testament,  are  perhaps  nowhere  seen  so 
condensed  as  in  that  crowning  hymn  of  the  vis- 
ible creation,  the  104th  Psalm. 

This  Psalm  presents,  as  has  often  been  re- 
marked, a  picture  of  the  entire  Universe,  which 
for  completeness,  for  breadth,  and  for  grandeur,  ia 


138        NATURE  IN  HEBREW  POETRY, 

unequaled  in  any  other  literature.  Where  else, 
in  human  language,  shall  we  find  the  whole  Uni- 
verse, the  heavens  and  the  earth,  and  the  ongo- 
ings of  man  in  the  midst  of  them,  sketched,  as 
here,  in  a  "  few  bold  strokes  "? — 

"  The  Lord  covereth  himself  with  light  as  with 
a  garment.  He  hath  stretched  the  heavens  like 
.1  canopy.  He  laid  the  foundation  of  the  round 
world  that  it  should  not  be  removed  forever. 
The  waters  springing  in  the  mountains  descend 
into  the  valleys,  unto  the  places  which  the  Lord 
hath  appointed  for  them,  that  they  may  never 
pass  the  bounds  which  He  hath  set  them.  He 
sendeth  the  springs  into  the  valleys,  which  run 
among  the  hills,  to  give  drink  to  every  beast  of 
the  field,  for  the  wild  asses  to  quench  their  thirst. 
.  .  .  Beside  them  the  birds  of  the  air  sing  among 
the  branches."  The  fruits  of  the  field,  too,  are 
there  ;  grass  and  green  herb  ;  the  labors  of  man, 
wine  and  oil  of  olive ;  all  the  creatures,  the  co- 
nies, the  wild  goats,  the  lions  roaring  after  their 
prey,  and  seeking  their  meat  from  God.  There, 
too,  is  the  great  and  wide  sea,  and  the  wondrous 
creatures  it  contains,  and  the  heavenly  bodies  are 
rounding  in  the  whole.  And  then  that  touching 
contrast  between  the  moving  life  of  the  elements 
and  the  quiet  yet  laborious  life  of  man,  encom- 
passed by  these  vast  movements,  —  "  Ma:i  goeth 
forth  unto  his  work  and  his  labor  until  the  even- 
ing." And  all  this  picture  of  the  Universe  con* 
tained  within  thirty-five  short  verses!  Besides 


AND  IN  HOMER.  139 

this,  the  special  Psalm  of  the  visible  creation, 
there  is  the  65th  Psalm,  and  many  another  pas- 
sage in  the  Psalms,  which  describe  so  touchingly 
the  way  in  which  God  deals  with  the  earth  through 
natural  processes. 

Again,  I  need  hardly  refer  to  the  Book  of  Job, 
especially  from  the  37th  to  the  41st  chapters, 
where  both  single  appearances  of  the  world  and 
the  arrangement  of  the  whole  are  depicted  in 
language  which  has  graven  itself  on  the  heart  of 
all  nations :  "  The  Lord  walks  on  the  heights 
of  the  sea,  on  the  ridges  of  the  'towering  waves 
heaped  up  by  the  storm."  Or  again :  "  The  morn- 
ing dawn  illumines  the  border  of  the  earth,  and 
moulds  variously  the  canopy  of  clouds  as  the 
hand  of  man  moulds  the  ductile  clay." 

Or  turn  again  to  the  great  poet-prophet  Isaiah. 
Here  you  find  no  detailed  descriptions,  but  all 
Nature  fused  and  molten  before  the  intense  fire, 
now  of  his  indignation,  now  of  his  adoring  awe, 
now  of  his  spiritual  joy ;  one  moment  lifting  his 
eyes  to  the  midnight  heavens  as  the  proof  and 
witness  of  the  Divine  Omnipotence ;  another,  in 
his  soul's  exultation  over  God's  redemptive  mercy, 
calling  aloud  to  the  heavens  to  sing,  and  the  lower 
parts  of  the  earth  to  shout  for  joy,  "  Break  forth 
into  singing,  ye  mountains,  O  forest  and  every 
tree  therein." 

But  this  transport  comes  from  no  mere  love  ot 
Nature.  It  has  a  deeper  origin.  It  is  for  that 
Jehovah  hath  comforted  his  people,  and  will 


140          NATURE  IN  HEBREW  POETRY, 

have  mercy  upon  his  afflicted.  This  is  the  sol* 
emn  spiritual  joy  in  which  he  calls  on  the  heav- 
ens and  the  earth  to  sympathize. 

The  following  seem  to  be  some  of  the  chief 
notes  of  Hebrew  poetry  in  its  dealing  with  Nat- 
ure:— 

1.  Nature,  as  we  have  seen,  is  never  repre- 
sented as  an  independent  power  or  as  resplendent 
with  her  own  beauty,  but  as  the  direct  creation, 
one  might  almost  say,  the  garment  of  the  great 
Jehovah.     In  fact  it  is  remarkable  that  the  word 
Nature,  in  the  *  sense  we  now  use  it  in,  never  oc- 
curs in  the   Bible.     Neither   th,e  word  nor  the 
thing,  as  a  separate  entity,  seems  ever  to  have 
been   present  to  the  Hebrew  mind.     In  every- 
thing they  saw  or  heard  God  himself  as  imme- 
diately present,  ready  as  it  were  to  rend  the  veil 
and  manifest  himself. 

2.  The  sober,  truthful  estimate  of  all  things  in 
the  external  world.     They  are  spoken  of  exactly 
as  they  are.     There  is  no  temptation  to  make  too 
much  of  them ;  for  He  who  is  behind  them  and 
who  made  them  is  so  much  greater,  so  much  more 
present  to  thought,  that  reverence  for  Him  pre- 
cludes exaggeration.     The  accuracy  of  the  Bible 
descriptions  of  these  things  is  quite  unexampled 
in  other  literature.1     This   faithfulness  to  fact, 
this  veneration  for  natural  truth,  this  feeling  that 
things  are  too  sacred  to  be  exaggerated  or  dis- 
torted, or  in  any  way  trifled  with,  comes  directly 

1  Dawson,  Nature  and  the  Bible,  pp.  23,  24. 


AND  IN  HOMER.  141 

from  the  hat  it  of  regarding  all  visible  Nature 
as  created  and  continually  upheld  by  One  Omni- 
present God.  Habitual  reverence  for  Him  from 
whom  they  come  sobers  the  writers  and  makes 
them  truthful. 

3.  Connected  with  this  is  the  absence  of  all 
tendency  to  theorize  or  frame  hypotheses  about 
Nature's  ongoings.  This  of  course  comes  from 
the  pervading  habit  of  referring  all  effects  directly 
to  the  Divine  will ;  and  yet  there  is  no  want  of 
philosophic  wonder,  for,  as  Humboldt  remarks, 
the  Book  of  Job  proposes  many  questions  about 
natural  things  "  which  modern  science  enables 
us  to  propound  more  formally,  and  to  clothe  in 
more  scientific  language,  but  not  to  solve  satis- 
factorily." Lastly,  there  is  a  deep-hearted  pathos, 
"  a  yearning  pensiveness,"  as  it  has  been  called,  in 
the  Hebrew  poetry,  over  man's  mortal  condition, 
as  when  in  images  straight  from  Nature  it  de- 
scribes his  life  here  as  "  a  wind  that  passeth  away 
and  cometh  not  again, "  or  "  as  a  flower  of  the 
field  so  he  flourisheth,  for  the  wind  passeth  over 
it  and  it  is  gone,  and  the  place  thereof  shall  know 
it  no  more."  Simple  images,  yet  how  true  for  all 
generations  I 

HOMER. 

When  we  turn  from  the  Hebrew  to  the  Greek 
poetry,  as  represented  by  the  father  of  it,  Homer, 
ve  find  ourselves  in  another  atmosphere.  It  is 
aot  merely  that  in  the  regard  which  the  great 
poet  casts  on  Nature,  mythology,  a  fading  and 


142          NATURE  IN  HEBREW  POETRY, 

only  half-alive  mythology,  still  lingered.  It  is 
not  this  only,  but  it  is  that  in  his  thoughts  of 
Nature  there  is  not  the  same  awful  reverence,  the 
same  profound  pathos ;  but  there  is  more  of  the 
artistic  sense  of  beauty,  that  artistic  sense  which 
is  only  fully  developed  when  the  profounder  feel- 
ings are  comparatively  laid  asleep. 

No  land  known  to  the  ancients,  perhaps  I  might 
say  no  land  ever  known  to  men,  has  supplied  such 
visual  stimulus  to  the  imagination  as  Greece  ;  — 
scenery  so  richly  diversified,  a  land  beyond  all 
others  various  in  features  and  elements,  mount- 
ains with  their  bases  plunged  into  the  sea,  val- 
leys intersected  by  great  rivers,  rich  plains  and 
meadows  inlaid  between  the  hill-ranges,  deeply 
indented  shores,  promontories  wood-clad  or  tem- 
ple-crowned looking  out  on  the  many-islanded, 
jEgean ;  —  around  it,  on  every  side,  seas  so  beau- 
tiful, above  it  such  a  canopy  of  sky,  changing 
through  every  hour  and  every  season,  and  calling 
forth  from  sea  and  land  every  color  which  sun- 
light and  gloom  can  elicit. 

If  of  all  nations  the  Greeks  were  endowed  with 
the  keenest  sensibility  to  beauty,  and  if  Homer 
was  their  chief  and  representative  poet,  it  could 
hardly  be  but  that  scenery  so  varied  should  melt 
into  his  imagination  and  reflect  itself  in  his  poetry. 
And  so  it  is.  Homer  lived  most  probably  on  the 
Ionian  coast  of  Asia  Minor,  where  he  had  ever 
before  his  eye  the  island-studded  ^Egean,  behind 
him  the  rich  valleys  opening  down  to  the  coast, 


AND  IN  HOMER.  143 

and  eastward  the  great  mountain  ranges  where 
these  rivers  are  cradled ;  could  it  be  that  of  all 
this  his  poetry  should  give  no  sign?  I  cannot 
agree  with  Mr.  Ruskin's  criticism  of  the  Homeric 
scenery.  You  will  find  it  in  the  third  volume  of 
his  "  Modern  Painters,"  chapter  xiii.,  on  Classj- 
cal  Landscape.  Like  everything  which  Mr.  Rus- 
km  writes,  it  is  interesting  and  suggestive,  but  I 
cannot  think  it  adequate  or  wholly  true.  Of  the 
Greeks  he  says:  "They  shrank  with  dread  or 
hatred  from  all  the  ruggedness  of  lower  nature  — 
from  the  wrinkled  forest  bark  and  the  jagged  hill- 
crest,  and  irregular  inorganic  storm  of  sky,  look- 
ing to  these  for  the  most  part  as  adverse  powers, 
and  taking  pleasure  only  in  such  portions  of  the 
lower  world  as  were  at  once  conducive  to  the  rest 
and  health  of  the  human  frame,  and  in  harmony 
with  the  laws  of  its  gentler  beauty."  Again  he 
says :  "  As  far  as  I  recollect,  without  a  single  ex- 
ception, every  Homeric  landscape,  intended  to  be 
beautiful,  is  composed  of  a  fountain,  a  meadow, 
and  a  shady  grove."  Again :  "  It  is  sufficiently 
notable  that  Homer,  living  in  mountainous  and 
-rocky  countries,  dwells  delightedly  on  all  the  flat 
bits;  and  so  I  think  invariably  the  inhabitants  of 
mountainous  countries  do ;  but  the  inhabitants  of 
the  plains  do  not,  in  any  similar  way,  dwell  de- 
lightedly on  mountains." 

Now,  in  this  passage,  the  general  assertion 
seems  to  be  much  too  sweeping,  and,  in  the  spe- 
cial instance  of  Homer,  I  think  it  is  not  true. 


144          NATURE  IN  HEBREW  POETRY, 

Mr.  Ruskin  backs  his  position  by  reference  to 
various  passages  in  the  Odyssey  which  seem  to 
bear  him  out,  but  in  any  fair  estimate  we  must 
take  in  the  Iliad  as  well  as  the  Odyssey. 

In  the  Iliad  the  descriptions  of  Nature  are  not 
BO  detailed  as  in  the  Odyssey.  Indeed,  they  occur 
almost  entirely  in  similes ;  but  these  the  poet 
fetches  from  every  realm  and  feature  of  Nature  — 
from  the  mountain,  the  forest,  the  sea,  especially 
as  seen  darkening  under  the  coming  of  the  west- 
ern breeze;  from  the  cloudy  and  the  midnight 
sky ;  from  all  kinds  of  wild  animals,  the  lion,  the 
fawn,  the  hawk,  and  the  boar.  In  his  battle- 
scenes  it  is  to  all  the  sterner  and  fiercer  aspects 
of  Nature,  and  habits  of  wild  beasts,  that  he  has 
recourse  for  his  comparisons.  And  would  he  have 
so  often  invoked  the  aid  of  these  wild  forces  and 
creatures  of  his  imagination  had  not  he  delighted 
in  them  ? 

So  when  Teucer  slays  Mentor,  it  is  thus,  as 
rendered  by  Lord  Derby :  — 

"  Down  he  fell, 

As  by  the  woodman's  axe,  on  some  high  peak 
Falls  a  proud  ash,  conspicuous  from  afar, 
Leveling  its  tender  leaves  upon  the  ground." 

It  is  thus  the  charge  of  Hector  is  described 
when  he  beat  back  the  Greeks  and  penned  them 
at  their  ships  :  — 

"  On  poured  the  Trojan  masses ;  in  the  van 
Hector  straight  forward  drove  in  full  career. 
As  some  huge  bowlder,  from  its  rocky  bed 
Detached,  and  by  the  wintry  torrent's  force 


AND  IN  HOMER.  145 

Hurled  down  the  steep  cliff's  face,  when  constant  rains 

The  massive  rock's  firm  hold  have  undermined  ; 

With  giant  bounds  it  flies  ;  the  crashing  wood 

Resounds  beneath  it ;  still  it  hurries  on, 

Until,  arriving  at  the  level  plain, 

Its  headlong  impulse  checked,  it  rolls  no  more." 

Or  take  another  similitude  drawn  from  the  sea. 
When  the  poet  wishes  to  describe  how  the 
Achaean  phalanxes  come  on  to  battle,  this  is  the 
image  he  employs :  — 

"  And  as  a  goatherd  from  his  watch-tower  crag 
Beholds  a  cloud  advancing  o'er  the  sea 
Beneath  the  west  wind's  breath ;  as  from  afar 
He  gazes,  black  as  pitch,  it  sweeps  along 
O'er  the  dark  face  of  ocean,  bearing  on 
A  hurricane  of  rain ;  he,  shuddering,  sees 
And  drives  his  flock  beneath  the  sheltering  cave. 
So  thick  and  dark  about  the  Argives  stirred, 
Impatient  for  the  war,  the  stalwart  youths, 
Black  masses,  bristling  close  with  spear  and  shield." 

Or  again,  when,  after  Agamemnon  has  retired 
wounded  from  the  battle,  Hector  comes  forth  and 
slips  his  Trojans  on  the  Achaean  host,  as  some 
hunter  slips  his  white-teethed  hounds  on  a  wild 
boar  or  a  lion,  and  himself 

"  Fell  on  their  battle,  as  some  roaring  storm 
Leaps  down  and  heaves  the  sleeping  violet  sea." 

One  after  another  he  lays  low  the  chiefs,  and 
their  names  fill  three  hexameters. 

"  Of  the  leaders  these 
He  slew,  then  on  the  nameless  people  fell 
As  when  with  hurricane  deep  the  west  wind  smites 
White  summer  clouds  high  piled  by  the  clear  south, 
And  volumed  wave  on  wave  comes  shoreward  rolled, 
10 


146          NATURE  IN  HEBREW  POETRY, 

And  the  white  flying  foam  is  scattered  high 
Before  the  loud  blast  of  far-wandering  wind." 

Let  me  now  give  one  instance  of  Homer's  feel- 
ing for  the  aspect  of  the  nightly  heavens.  It 
shall  be  taken  from  the  place  of  the  Iliad  where 
the  Trojans,  after  a  day  of  successful  battle,  hav- 
ing driven  back  the  Greeks,  rest  for  the  night. 
And  here  I  shall  quote,  not,  as  in  the  above  pas- 
sage, from  Lord  Derby's  translation,  but  from  a 
rendering  of  the  passage  by  the  Poet-Laureate. 
It  is  the  only  passage  of  Homer  in  which  we  have 
the  Laureate's  handiwork :  — 

"  So  Hector  said,  and  sea-like  roared  his  host, 
Then  loosed  their  sweating  horses  from  the  yoke, 
And  each  beside  his  chariot  bound  his  own, 
And  oxen  from  the  city,  and  goodly  sheep 
In  haste  they  drove,  and  honey-hearted  wine 
And  bread  from  out  their  houses  brought,  and  heaped 
Their  firewood,  and  the  winds  from  off  the  plain 
Kolled  the  rich  vapor  far  into  the  heaven. 
And  there  all  night  upon  the  bridge  of  war 
Sat  glorying  ;  many  a  fire  before  them  blazed ; 
As  when  in  heaven  the  stars  about  the  moon 
Look  beautiful,  when  all  the  winds  are  laid, 
And  every  height  comes  out,  and  jutting  peak 
And  valley,  and  the  immeasurable  heavens 
Break  open  to  their  highest,  and  all  the  stars 
Shine,  and  the  shepherd  gladdens  in  his  heart : 
So  many  a  fire  between  the  ships  and  stream 
Of  Xanthus  blazed  before  the  towers  of  Troy. 
A  thousand  on  the  plain ;  and  close  by  each 
Sat  fifty  in  the  blaze  of  burning  fire ; 
And  champing  golden  grain  the  horses  stood 
Hard  by  their  chariots  waiting  for  the  dawn." 

These  few  samples  of  the  similes  scattered 
thick  throughout  the  Iliad  show  that  Homer  laid 


AND  IN  HOMER.  147 

all  the  appearances  of  Nature  under  contribution, 
and  the  wildest  and  grandest  not  less  than  those 
that  are  homelike. 

True  it  is  that  Homer  in  the  Iliad  nowhere 
stops  to  paint  scenery  for  its  own  sake.  He  does 
this  less  than  Virgil  or  most  later  epic  poets.  He 
is  so  full  of  business  and  of  human  action  that 
he  cannot  stay  for  description.  But  in  such  pas- 
sages as  the  Catalogue  of  the  Grecian  Host  in 
the  second  book,  there  are  brief  but  fine  touches 
of  geographical  landscape,  as  he  tells  of  the  many 
lands  whence  they  came ;  or  again  in  his  fixed 
but  most  suggestive  epithets  of  places,  as  "  the 
windy  Ilion,"  "  many-fountained  Ida,"  and  the 
deep-whirlpooled  Scamander ;  Lacedsemon  in  the 
hollow  of  the  hills  ;  Messe,  haunt  of  wild  doves  ; 
vine-clad  Epidaurus  ;  windy  Enerpe ;  Orchome- 
nus  rich  in  flocks. 

I  would  that  I  could  linger  over  this  subject 
and  quote  some  more  passages,  such  as  that 
where  Achilles,  long  absent,  returns  to  the  con- 
flict, and  the  immortal  gods  come  down  to  range 
themselves,  some  with  the  Greeks,  some  on  the 
side  of  Troy ;  and  heaven  and  earth,  the  mount- 
ains and  the  rivers  and  the  sea  and  the  nether 
world  beneath,  all  are  moved  to  take  part  in  the 
great  issue. 

But  I  must  pass  on  to  the  scenery  of  the  Od- 
yssey. No  doubt  this  poem  contains  much  more 
description  of  landscape  than  the  Iliad,  and  in 
that  description,  as  Mr.  Ruskin  says,  there  seems 


148  NATURE  IN  HEBREW  POETRY, 

to  be  a  preference  for  the  tame  and  domestic 
rather  than  for  the  wild  in  Nature.  But  is  there 
not  enough  in  the  subject  and  circumstance  of  the 
two  poems  to  account  for  such  difference  ?  Ulys- 
ses, the  much-traveled,  much-suffering  man,  who 
had  endured  so  many  things  by  land  and  sea,  his 
home-sick  heart  is  yearning  for  his  native  Ithaca. 
That  his  heart  should  be  weary  of  the  sea  and 
the  mountains  and  all  wild  untractable  things  is 
only  too  natural.  It  is  quite  in  keeping  with  and 
as  a  set-off  against  this  feeling  of  home-weari- 
ness that  the  poet,  in  describing  such  a  wanderer, 
should  dwell  with  peculiar  emphasis  on  all  that  is 
warm  and  comfortable  and  home-like  in  scenery. 

Let  me  give  one  or  two  samples  from  Worsley's 
translation  of  the  Odyssey,  which  I  am  disposed 
to  think  is  the  best  poetic  translation  of  any  clas- 
sical poet  that  we  have  in  English.  Mr.  Worsley 
rendered  the  hexameters  of  Homer  into  the  Spen- 
serian stanza,  and  he  so  perfectly  caught  the  whole 
rhythm  and  cadence  of  Spenser,  and  this  answers 
so  well  to  the  spirit  of  the  Odyssey,  the  most 
romantic  of  Greek  poems,  that  I  know  no  more 
delightful  reading  than  those  picturesque  and 
melodious  stanzas. 

Here  is  one  sample.  Ulysses,  having  left  Ca- 
lypso's island  on  a  raft,  is  shipwrecked  in  mid- 
seas,  and  this  is  the  description  of  his  coming  to 
land  on  the  island  of  Phseacia :  — 

"  Two  nights  and  days  in  the  tumultuous  swell 
He  wandered.     Often  did  his  heart  forebode 


AND  IN  HOMER.  149 

Utter  extint  tion  in  the  yawning  hell, 

But  when  the  fair-haired  Dawn  arising  glowed, 

And  in  the  eastern  heaven  the  thin  light  showed, 

Came  a  calm-deepening  day,  windless  and  clear. 

Then  when  Odysseus  on  a  tall  wave  rode, 

And  his  keen  eyes  along  the  heaving  mere 

Stretched  in  extreme  desire,  he  saw  the  land  rise  near. 

"  As  when  a  father,  on  the  point  to  die, 
Who  for  long  time  in  sore  disease  hath  lain, 
By  the  strong  Fates  tormented  heavily, 
Till  the  pulse  faileth  for  exceeding  pain, 
Feels  the  life  stirring  in  his  bones  again ; 
While  glad  at  heart  his  children  smile  around, 
He  also  smiles  —  the  gods  have  loosed  his  chain ; 
So  welcome  seemed  the  land  with  forest  crowned, 
And  he  rejoicing  swam,  and  yearned  to  feel  the  ground. 

"  But  now  within  a  voice-throw  of  the  rocks 
The  sound  of  waters  did  his  ears  appall. 
Full  on  the  coast  the  great  waves'  thunder-shocks 
Roll,  and  afar  the  wet  foam-vapors  fall. 
No  roadstead  there,  no  haven  seemed  at  all, 
Nor  shelter  where  a  ship  might  rest  at  ease ; 
But  from  the  main-earth  darted  a  wild  wall 
Of  headlands.     Then  Odysseus'  heart  and  knees 
Were  loosened ;  and  his  soul  thus  spake  in  the  deep  seas." 

Then  follows  a  fine  description  of  his  struggle 
with  the  breakers,  and  how  his  flesh  was  torn  and 
his  skin  peeled  against  the  sharp  rocks  :  — 

"  He  from  the  echoing  breakers  swam  right  fain, 
Skirting  the  coast ;  if  chance  his  eyes  explore 
Or  far  or  near  some  haven  of  the  main, 
Or  mild  declivity  of  shelving  shore. 
But  when  he  came  the  river-mouth  before, 
And  his  gaze  rested  on  the  long  white  gleam, 
By  rocks  uuchafed  and  windless  evermore, 
Here  to  his  thought  best  landing-place  did  seem, 
And  in  his  soul  he  praysd,  feeling  the  calm  sweet  stream." 


150  NATURE  IN  HEBREW  POETRY. 

Then  the  landing  and  climbing  up  into  the 
wood,  and  hiding  himself  under  a  mound  of 
gathered  leaves :  — 

"  Where  o'er  his  weary  head, 
Athene  all  night  long  pain-healing  slumber  shed." 

But  I  recommend  every  one  to  read  the  last 
hundred  lines  of  the  fifth  book  of  the  Odyssey. 
It  is  one  of  the  most  natural  and  beautiful  de- 
scriptions of  sea-coast  scenery,  heightened  in  its 
interest  by  the  presence  of  man  in  strife  with  the 
waters,  that  is  to  be  found  in  any  poet. 

The  whole  of  this  passage  is  commented  on  by 
Mr.  Ruskin  at  length,  but  I  think  his  comments 
are  one-sided  and  overdone.  No  doubt  the  ship- 
wrecked man  kisses  the  corn-growing  land  when 
at  last  he  reaches  it,  and  gladly  covers  himself 
with  the  dead  leaves.  But  it  is  not,  as  Mr.  Rus- 
kin says,  that  the  Greek  mind  shrank  from  wild 
things,  and  took  pleasure  only  in  things  subser- 
vient to  human  use.  It  is  because  it  was  the 
action  natural  to  a  shipwrecked  man  just  escaped 
from  the  hateful  sea  to  hug  the  land  he  had  so 
much  toil  to  reach ;  and  it  was  natural  for  a  poet, 
when  describing  his  hero  tossed  and  drenched  for 
days  amid  the  hungry  foam,  to  bring  out  in  strong 
contrast  all  the  warmth  and  comfort  of  the  dry 
cheerful  earth.1 

One  sample  of  Homer's  home-painting  must  be 
given,  where  we  see  — 

1  Odyssey,  B.  vii.  112;  Worsley,  B.  vii.  17th  stanza. 


AND  IN  HOMER.  151 

"  All  things  are  in  order  stored  — 
A  home  of  ancient  peace ; "  — 

"Outside  the  court-yard  stretched  a  planted  space 
Of  orchard,  and  a  fence  environed  all  the  place. 

'  There,  in  full  prime,  the  orchard-trees  grew  tall, 
Sweet-fig,  pomegranate,  apple  fruited  fair, 
Pear  and  the  healthful  olive.    Each  and  all 
Both  summer  droughts  and  chills  of  winter  spare. 
All  the  year  round  they  flourish.     Some  the  air 
Of  zephyr  warms  to  life,  some  doth  mature, 
Apple  grows  old  on  apple,  pear  on  pear, 
Fig  follows  fig,  vintage  doth  vintage  lure ; 
Thus  the  rich  revolution  doth  for  age  endure. 

"  With  well-sunned  floor  for  drying,  there  is  seen 
The  vineyard.    Here  the  grapes  they  cull,  there  tread. 
Here  falls  the  blossom  from  the  clusters  green, 
There  the  first  blushings  by  the  suns  are  shed. 
Last,  flowers  forever  fadeless,  bed  by  bed ; 
Two  streams  :  one  waters  the  whole  garden  fair ; 
One  through  the  court-yard,  near  the  house  is  led, 
Whereto  with  pitcher  all  the  folk  repair. 
All  these  the  God-sent  gifts  to  King  Alcinous  were." 

I  might  go  on  to  quote  the  description  of  Ca 
lypso's  cave,  and  many  another  landscape  with 
which  this  Greek  romance  abounds.  Indeed,  it 
would  take  a  summer  day  to  exhaust  the  passages 
descriptive  of  Nature  in  the  Odyssey  and  the 
Iliad  alone,  before  we  could  arrive  at  an  adequate 
idea  of  the  Homeric  view  of  Nature.  This  only 
I  will  say  and  pass  on  —  that  in  the  Odyssey  you 
do  find  that  the  scenes  most  lovingly  depicted  are 
home  scenes  of  order,  comfort,  and  repose.  But 
this  is  not  because,  as  Mr.  Kuskin  says,  the  Greek 


152  NATURE   IN  HOMER. 

mind  abhorred  the  wildness  of  nature,  but  be- 
cause, with  such  a  character  to  describe  as  Ulys- 
ses, battered  by  the  strokes  of  doom,  travel-weary 
and  home-sick,  the  natural  framework  to  such  a 
human  figure,  that  which  gives  at  once  contrast 
and  relief,  is  a  setting  taken  from  the  reposeful 
side  of  Nature.  Of  storm  and  trouble  you  have 
had  enough  in  the  human  character.  Nature  here 
must  furnish  the  background  of  repose.  But  in 
the  Iliad,  if  we  look  at  the  similes,  we  find  them 
taken  from  every  form  and  aspect  of  Nature  — 
the  wild  and  vast  as  well  as  the  homely  and  the 
minute.  The  poet  gathers  images  from  every  ele- 
ment, earth,  sky,  and  sea,  mountain  and  meadow ; 
but  all  are  used,  not  for  their  own  sakes,  not  to 
dwell  on  themselves  alone,  but  to  bring  out  by 
similitude  the  force  of  the  human  passions  and 
actions,  which  are  the  substance  of  the  epic.  But 
the  poet  who  could  so  use  Nature,  making 'her  a 
storehouse  of  images  whence  he  drew  at  will, 
must  have  lived  familiarly  in  the  eye  of  Nature, 
loving  her  in  all  her  aspects  with  a  true  though 
unconscious  love. 


CHAPTER  X. 
NATURE  IN  LUCRETIUS  AND  VIRGIL, 

WHEN  from  the  representations  of  Nature  in 
Homer,  and  indeed  in  all  the  Greek  poets,  we 
turn  to  the  rural  descriptions  of  the  Roman  poets, 
we  feel  that  we  have  passed  into  a  wholly  differ- 
ent atmosphere.  If  there  were  no  other  there  is 
at  least  this  cardinal  distinction  between  them :  — 
The  Greeks  had  no  antiquity  behind  them,  at 
least  no  earlier  literature  to  come  between  them 
and  the  open  face  of  things.  They  saw  at  first 
hand  with  their  own  eyes,  felt  with  their  own 
hearts,  described  in  their  own  words.  The  Ro- 
mans, those  at  least  of  the  literary  age,  before 
they  wrote  a  line  that  has  come  down  to  us,  had 
received  the  whole  Hellenic  learning  and  poetry 
poured  in  upon  them,  so  that  the  very  air  of 
Italy  was  colored  with  the  hues  of  Greece.  This 
makes  it  so  difficult,  in  studying  the  productions 
of  any  Roman  poet  —  their  descriptions  of  Nat- 
ure not  less  than  other  things  —  to  be  sure  that 
you  have  the  features  of  Italian  scenery  pure  and 
uncolored,  and  that  they  have  not  been  tinged 
and  refracted  by  the  Hellenic  medium  of  associa- 
tions and  language  through  which  they  werer 


154    NATURE  IN  LUCRETIUS  AND   VIRGIL. 

habitually  beheld.  No  doubt  the  Romans  origi- 
nally were  and  never  ceased  to  be  a  country-loving 
people.  The  pictures  that  have  come  down  to  us 
of  Cincinnatus,  and  of  other  worthies  of  the  early 
Republic,  represent  even  their  greatest  generals 
and  dictators  as  living  on  paternal  farms  in  rural 
thrift  and  simplicity.  But  there  remains  no  po- 
etry coeval  with  that  primitive  time.  Before  we 
reach  their  poets  the  day  of  small  estates  and 
patrician  life  in  the  fields  is  over,  all  Italy  is 
held  in  vast  domains  by  rich  senators  who  them- 
selves lived  in  the  city,  and  committed  the  care 
of  their  lands  to  a  bailiff  with  hordes  of  slaves. 

In  the  last  half-century  of  the  Republic,  to 
which  belong  the  earliest  Roman  poets  who  de- 
scribe Nature,  the  town  life,  varied  by  retirement 
to  the  Tiburtine  or  Sabine  villa,  was  universal 
among  the  poets  and  'their  associates.  Some  of 
them  had  passed  their  childhood  in  the  rustic  life 
of  distant  provinces,  and  the  remembrance  of 
that  life  still  lives  in  their  poetry,  as  in  Catullus, 
and  more  distinctively  in  Virgil.  The  earliest 
pictures  of  Nature  that  occur  in  any  Roman  po- 
etry are  to  be  found  not  in  pastoral  or  idyl,  but 
in  the  great  philosophic  poem  that  expounds  an 
elaborate  system  of  Nature.  Lucretius  was  too 
earnest  a  preacher  of  his  Atomic  Philosophy  to 
linger  over  descriptions  of  scenery  for  their  own 
sake.  Nevertheless,  his  wearisome  expositions  of 
materialistic  system  are  relieved  by  many  a  beau- 
tiful illustration  drawn  directly  from  the  Nature 


NATURE  IN  LUCRETIUS  AND   VIRGIL.    155 

which  his  own  eyes  had  seen,  and  portrayed  with 
a  clearness  of  outline  and  a  startling  vividness, 
in  which,  as  Professor  Sellar  has  truly  said,  he  is 
unrivaled  in  antiquity  save  by  Homer.  The 
rigorous  dogmatism  of  a  mechanical  philosophy 
is  in  him  combined  with  the  keenest  eye  to  all 
the  appearances  of  the  outer  world,  minute  as 
well  as  vast.  Evidently  he  had  lived  much  in 
the  open  air,  had  been  a  haunter  of  all  waste 
places,  wild  mountain  ranges,  dripping  caves,  sol- 
itary sea-shores.  He  had  noted  all  the  sights, 
listened  to  the  sounds  and  the  silences,  and  ob- 
served the  ways  of  the  wild  creatures  that  dwell 
there.  His  impressions  he  has  stamped  in  many 
a  noble  line,  that  comes  in  with  delightful  fresh- 
ness to  illustrate  his  prolix  argument.  His  eye 
was  upon  the  smallest  and  most  sequestered  ap- 
pearances, as  the  many-colored  shells  on  the  shore, 
and  the  dripping  of  water  over  moss-covered 
rocks ;  but  still  more  familiarly  did  his  imagina- 
tion move  with  the  great  elemental  movements 
of  Nature,  and  when  the  storms  and  winds  were 
up,  he  found  himself  "one  among  the  many 
there."  According  to  the  philosophy  he  had 
adopted,  and  earnestly  propounded,  all  the  most 
beautiful  and  mysterious  aspects  of  things  were 
the  mere  products  of  dead  mechanic  forces.  But 
the  genius  of  the  poet  at  times  shook  itself  free 
from  the  trammels  of  his  creed,  and  rose  to  the 
contemplation,  not  of  a  dead  mechanic  world,  but 
of  one  informed  by  a  vast  life,  which  moves 


156    NATURE  IN  LUCRETIUS  AND   VIRGIL. 

through  all  material  things,  and  makes  them  in- 
stinct with  unity. 

In  the  language  of  the  philosophers,  while  con- 
sciously he  taught  only  a  Natura  naturata,  his 
imagination  and  sympathy  grasped,  in  spite  of 
him,  a  Natura  naturans.  It  is  impossible  that 
any  great  poet,  however  his  understanding  may 
be  caught  in  the  meshes  of  mere  materialism,  can 
in  his  hours  of  inspiration  rest  contented  with 
that.  Assuredly  Lucretius  did  not.  Accordingly, 
we  find  him  here  and  there  breaking  out  into  the 
earliest  utterance  of  that  mystical  Pantheistic 
feeling  about  the  life  of  Nature,  which  we  shall 
find  reappearing  in  Virgil,  and  which  has  recurred 
so  powerfully  in  modern  poetry. 

Catullus,  the  poet  contemporary  with  Lucre- 
tius, is  too  much  absorbed  in  love  and  friendship, 
finds  too  exciting  an  interest  in  the  society  of 
man,  to  give  much  time  to  Nature.  In  his  most 
original  poems,  or  at  least  those  in  which  he  most 
speaks  out  his  feelings,  Nature  holds  little,  almost, 
no  place.  Two  poems  refer  to  his  villa  at  Tibur, 
with,  however,  little  mention  of  any  rural  pleas- 
ures connected  with  it. 

The  well-known  lines  on  his  return  to  his 
home  at  Sirmio,  on  the  Lago  di  Garda,  for  all 
their  wonderful  charm,  breathe  more  of  the  love 
of  home  and  rest  after  long  voyaging  than  of  en* 
joyment  in  Nature  for  her  own  sake.  His  more 
elaborate  and  artistic  poems  contain  some  beauti 
ful  natural  images  and  similes,  expressed  with 


NATURE  IN  LUCRETIUS  AND   VIRGIL,    157 

that  unstudied  felicity  and  clear  sense  of  beauty 
which  distinguished  him.  But  they  do  not  come 
to  more  than  side  glances  by  the  way,  as  he  hur- 
ries on  to  his  human  theme.  It  has,  however, 
been  remarked,  that  while  to  Lucretius,  to  Hor- 
ace, even  to  Virgil,  the  sea  is  a  thing  of  dread 
rather  than  of  admiration,  from  which  they  shrank 
as  a  treacherous  creature,  Catullus  felt  the  grand- 
eur of  its  immensity,  and  rejoiced  in  the  laughter 
of  the  waves  in  calm,  and  in  their  changing  colors 
beneath  the  storm. 

Germans  have  written  learned  books,  some  to 
maintain,  others  to  deny,  that  the  ancient  Greeks 
and  Romans  had  any  feeling  for  Nature,  or,  as  the 
phrase  goes,  were  inspired  by  the  sentiment  of 
Nature.  Schiller  has  gone  as  far  as  to  deny  that 
Homer  had  any  more  caring  for  Nature  than  he 
had  for  the  garment,  the  shield,  the  armor,  which 
he  describes  with  equal  relish.  In  the  face  of 
such  an  assertion  we  have  but  to  read  a  few  pas- 
sages from  Homer  above  cited,  and  innumerable 
others  like  them.  No  doubt  the  ancients  had  not 
that  intimate,  delicate,  dwelling  sympathy  for 
Nature  which  we  call  the  modern  feeling.  But 
there  is  hardly  a  tone  of  sentiment  which  Nature 
in  modern  times  has  evoked,  of  which  some  faint 
prelude  at  least  might  not  be  found  among  them. 
Passages  from  the  dialogue,  and  especially  from 
the  choruses,  of  Sophocles  and  Euripides,  might, 
had  we  time,  have  been  cited,  which  speak  of 
natural  objects  with  almost  as  much  fondness  aa 
though  they  had  been  written  yesterday. 


158    NATURE  IN  LUCRETIUS  AND   VIRGIL. 

One  side  of  this  feeling,  which  is  dwelt  on  as 
peculiarly  a  birth  of  recent  times,  is  the  passion 
for  mountains.  And  no  doubt  the  feeling  of  the 
Latin  poets  as  they  thought  of  them  was  for  the 
most  part  shuddering  and  affright.  Yet  Virgil 
though  he  generally  speaks  the  same  language, 
seems  at  times  to  catch  something  of  their  free 
and  far  delight,  as  when  he  speaks  of  Father 
Apennine  roaring  with  all  his  holm-oaks,  and  re- 
joicing to  heave  his  snow-white  summit  into  the 
sky.  In  such  a  passage  it  would  seem  as  though 
the  power  of  hills  was  for  a  moment  on  him,  and 
he  caught  a  prophetic  glimpse  of  that  mountain- 
rapture  which  was  reserved  for  this  century  at 
last  adequately  to  express.  Quinctilian,  how- 
ever, represents  the  current  feeling  of  his  coun- 
trymen when  he  says,  "  Species  marifcimis,  planis, 
amoenis,"  —  Beauty  belongs  to  countries  that  lie 
beside  the  sea,  level  and  pleasant. 

But  granting  that  the  feeling  for  Nature  among 
the  Romans  was  thus  limited,  if  one  wished  to 
prove  that  it  was  real,  one  would  be  content  to 
point  to  Virgil  alone.  His  preeminence  as  a  poet 
of  the  country  was  early  recognized  by  his  friend 
and  contemporary,  Horace  :  — 

"  Molle  atque  facetum 
Virgilio  annuerunt  gaudentes  rure  Camoense,"  — 

To  Virgil  the  Muses  of  the  country  gave  the  gift 
of  delicacy  and  artistic  skill.  When  Horace  thus 
wrote  of  his  friend  only  the  Eclogues  had  as 
yet  appeared.  But  the  two  greater  poems  which 


NATURE  IN  LUCRETIUS  AND    VIRGIL.    159 

Virgil  afterwards  produced,  among  their  other 
merits,  elevate  him,  as  a  lover  and  describer  of 
natural  scenes,  to  a  place  which  his  earlier  Doems 
alone  would  not  have  won  for  him. 

With  regard  to  the  Eclogues,  the  purely  im- 
itative and  conventional  character  of  their  lan- 
guage, personages,  and  sentiment,  is  well  known. 
But  for  long  it  was  believed  that  their  scenery  at 
least  was  real,  borrowed  from  Mantua  and  the 
banks  of  his  native  Mincio.  But  later  critics  have 
shown  that  imitation  penetrated  even  here,  and 
that  as  the  sentiments  and  substance  of  the  Ec- 
logues are  all  borrowed  from  Theocritus,  not  less 
is  the  framework  of  scenery  in  which  these  are 
set.  The  vine-clad  cave  in  which  the  shepherd 
reclines,  the  briery  crag  from  which  he  sees  his 
goats  hanging,  the  mountains  that  cast  long  shad- 
ows toward  evening,  these,  it  is  said,  are  no- 
where to  be  seen  in  the  neighborhood  of  Mantua, 
but  belong  entirely  to  Sicily.  Some  even  assert 
that  neither  the  ilex,  the  chestnut,  nor  the  beech 
grows  anywhere  near  the  banks  of  the  Mincio. 
Yet  even  amid  the  prevailingly  Sicilian  scenery 
there  are  touches  here  and  there,  where  he  re- 
verts to  what  his  own  eyes  had  seen,  as  where  he 
describes  his  farm  as  covered  with  bare  stones 
and  slimy  bulrushes,  and  the  Mincio  as  weaving 
for  his  green  banks  a  fringe  of  tender  reeds. 

Even  though  the  imagery  of  the  Eclogues  may 
be  borrowed  from  the  Sicilian  poet,  yet  here, 
as  everywhere,  Virgil  is  no  mere  translator,  but 


160    NATURE  IN  LUCRETIUS  AND   VIRGIL. 

proves  by  the  tender  grace  of  the  language  in 
which  he  clothes  the  borrowed  imagery  his  feel- 
ing for  original  Nature.  In  the  fifth  Eclogue, 
when  two  shepherds  have  been  playing  each  his 
finest  strain,  partly  to  please,  partly  to  emulate 
the  other,  at  the  close,  Menalcas  says  to  Mop- 
BUS  :  — 

*  Such  is  thy  song  to  me,  O  singer  divine ! 
As  is  sleep  upon  the  grass  to  weary  men,  as  in  summer  heat, 
Thirst  to  slake  with  pleasant  water  from  the  leaping  brook." 

And  then  when  Menalcas  has  sung  his  strain 
this  is  the  reply  of  Mopsus  :  — 

"  What  gifts,  what  shall  I  render  thee  for  such  a  song  ? 
For  not  so  delightful  to  my  ear  is  the  sighing  of  the  coming 

south  wind, 

Nor  the  beating  of  billows  upon  the  shore, 
Nor  the  sound  of  streams  down-falling  through   the   rocky 


Of  these  and  suchlike  images  the  first  hints 
may  have  been  from  Theocritus,  but  assuredly 
they  have  won  a  new  charm  in  their  passage 
through  the  mind  of  Virgil. 

But  if  the  scenery  of  the  Eclogues  partakes 
in  some  measure  of  the  conventional  mould  in 
which  the  whole  of  the  poems  are  cast,  the 
Greorgics  are  poetry  in  earnest,  dealing  with  a 
real  subject,  and  describing,  in  many  places  at 
least,  real  landscapes.  Doubtless  here,  too,  as 
everywhere,  Virgil  is  the  learned  poet ;  his  mind 
comes  to  his  subject  laden  with  the  spoils  of  all 
antiquity.  As  he  describes  natural  objects,  all 
the  associations  which  ancient  Mythology  and 


NATURE  IN  LUCRETIUS  AND   VIRGIL.    161 

Greek  poetry  had  thrown  around  them  rise  spon- 
taneously before  him.  Thus  he  would  often 
seem  to  look  at  things  not  at  first-hand  with  his 
own  eyes,  but  through  the  media  which  former 
poets  had  fashioned  for  him.  But  this,  if  we 
think  of  it,  is  one  element  of  the  consummate 
art  of  the  Georgics.  The  poet  had  to  raise  a 
homely  subject  above  the  dust  of  commonplace, 
to  add  dignity  to  objects  and  processes  which  in 
themselves  might  seem  undignified,  or  even  vulgar. 
Therefore  he  takes  the  husbandman  back  to 
earlier  times,  and  invests  his  toils  with  all  the 
veneration  and  sanctity  which  primeval  tradition 
has  shed  around  them,  and  teaches  him  to  feel 
that  in  his  pursuits  he  is  one  with  the  first  fore- 
fathers of  the  race.  This  archaic  coloring,  richly 
yet  delicately  suffused,  invests  the  poem  with  a 
peculiar  charm.  Just  so  a  modern  poet,  wishing 
to  throw  around  the  life  of  shepherd  and  hus- 
bandman, even  in  our  own  days,  an  air  of  ancient 
reverence,  might  still  revert  to  Bible  stories  of 
the  patriarchs  —  to  Jacob  and  Rachel  meeting  by 
the  well,  to  Ruth  in  the  corn-field,  and  David 
among  the  sheep-cotes  of  Bethlehem.  But  mak- 
ing full  allowance  for  all  that  is  archaic  and 
mythological  in  the  allusions  to  distant  ages  and 
Eastern  lands,  there  remains  a  large  background 
of  landscape  in  which  th  3  plains  of  Mantua  and 
Campania  lie  spread  before  us,  and  the  intense 
skies  of  Italy  bend  overhead. 

Such  a  passage  as  the  following  is  surely  the 
11 


162    NATURE  IN  LUCRETIUS  AND   VIRGIL. 

work  of  one  who  had  watched  and  loved  the  alter- 
nations of  the  Italian  summer :  — 

"But  when  glad  summer  at  the  west  winds'  call 
Shall  send  the  flocks  to  woods  and  pastures  free, 
Then  'neath  the  star  of  dawn  on  the  cool  fields 
Let  browse  thy  sheep  and  goats,  while  morn  is  young, 
And  the  fresh  dew  lies  hoary  on  the  grass  — 
The  dew  on  tender  blade,  to  cattle  dear. 
When  the  fourth  hour  of  day  brings  parching  thirst, 
And  in  the  trees  cicadas'  notes  are  loud, 
Then  bid  the  herd  at  wells  and  deep  clear  pools 
Drink  the  stream  running  from  full  oaken  troughs. 
But  in  the  deep  noon  heat  a  shady  vale 
Seek,  if  perchance  some  oak  of  antique  bulk 
TKere  spread  his  giant  boughs ;  or  some  grove  dark 
With  many  a  holm-oak's  gloom  reposeth  nigh 
In  hallowed  shadow.    Then  at  set  of  sun 
Once  more  supply  clear  streams  and  drive  afield 
Thy  flock,  when  eventide  cools  all  the  air, 
And  the  moon  dewy-moist  repairs  the  lawns 
With  freshness,  while  the  shores  with  halcyon  notes 
Resound,  the  copses  with  the  goldfinch  song." 

It  has  generally  been  held  that  one  of  the 
most  prominent  notes  of  Virgil's  genius  was  his 
sympathy  with  Nature.  To  this  the  late  Pro- 
fessor Conington,  whose  opinion  on  whatever  con- 
cerned Virgil  deserves  all  respect,  used  to  demur, 
and  to  maintain  rather  that  his  chief  character- 
istic lay  in  an  elaborate  and  refined  culture,  mani- 
festing itself  in  the  most  consummate  delicacy 
and  grace.  But  though  Virgil  was  before  all 
things  the  poet  of  learned  culture  and  artistic 
beauty,  this  did  not  hinder,  rather  prompted  him, 
to  turn  on  Nature  a  sympathetic  and  loving  eye. 
The  perception  of  a  sympathy  between  the  feel 


NATURE  IN  LUCRETIUS  AND  VIRGIL.    163 

ings  and  vicissitudes  of  man  and  the  world  that 
surrounds  him  appears  nowhere  so  strongly  as  in 
his  latest  poem,  the  JEneid.  It  may  have  been 
that  as  his  subject  led  him  much  into  battles  and 
adventures,  alien  to  his  taste,  he  seized  all  the 
more  eagerly  every  opportunity  of  reverting  to 
that  Nature  which  had  been  his  earliest  delight. 

Whatever  be  the  cause,  the  pictures  of  Nature, 
whether  in  description  or  in  simile,  are  more 
frequent,  more  intimate,  more  tender,  than  in 
either  of  his  earlier  productions.  It  has  been 
noticed,  for  instance,  that  at  the  beginning  of  the 
sixth  book,  as  the  Sibyl  draws  nigh,  the  earth 
rumbles,  the  mountains  quake,  as  if  sharing  the 
human  dread  at  her  approach ;  and  that  through- 
out the  fourth  book  there  is  maintained  a  fine 
sympathy  between  the  aspects  of  the  outer  world 
and  the  passions  which  agitate  the  human  actors. 

It  is  thus  he  sets  off  the  tumult  in  the  soul  of 
the  lovelorn  and  wronged  queen  in  contrast  with 
the  calm  and  silence  of  night :  — 

*  Now  night  it  was,  and  everything  on  earth  had  won  the  grace 
Of  quiet  sleep ;  the  woods  had  rest,  the  wildered  waters'  face : 
It  was  the  tide  when  stars  roll  on  amid  their  courses  due, 
And  all  the  tilth  is  hushed,  and  beasts,  and  birds  of  many  a 

hue, 

And  all  that  is  in  waters  wide,  and  what  the  waste  doth  keep 
In  thicket  rough,  amid  the  hush  of  night  tide  lay  asleep, 
And  slipping  off  the  load  of  care  forgat  their  toilsome  part. 
But  ne'er  might  that  Phoenician  queen,  that  most  unhappy 

heart, 

Sink  into  sleep,  or  take  the  night  into  her  eyes  and  breast, 
Her  sorrows  grow,  and  love  again  swells  up  with  all  unrest." 


164    NATURE  IN  LUCRETIUS  AND   VIRGIL. 

Is  not  the  feeling  here  what  would  be  called 
quite  modern  ?  For  its  tone,  might  it  not  have 
been  written  yesterday  ?  This  contrast  between 
Nature's  repose  and  the  tumult  of  the  human 
heart,  thus  consciously  felt  and  expressed,  belong 
to  a  late  and  self-conscious  age.  In  Homer  you 
may  see  such  contrasts,  as  when  Helen,  looking 
from  the  walls  of  Troy,  misses  her  true  brothers 
from  among  the  Achaian  host,  and  says  that  they 
kept  aloof  from  the  war,  fearing  the  reproach 
which  she  had  brought  on  herself  and  them.  And 
the  poet  adds :  — 

"  So  spake  she,  but  them  already  the  life-giving  earth  covered 
In  Lacedaemon  there,  in  their  dear  native  land." 

Here  the  contrast  is  only  half  consciously  felt, 
hinted  at  obliquely,  not  brought  into  prominence. 
To  emphasize  and  dwell  on  the  contrast,  as  Virgil 
does,  is  modern,  one  of  the  many  points  in  which 
the  Latin  poet's  feeling  is  like  that  of  our  own 
day. 

Many  more  passages  might  be  cited  where  Vir- 
gil turns  aside  from  his  epic  narrative  to  dwell 
over  natural  scenes.  The  elaborate  description 
of  the  storm  in  the  first  book ;  the  sail  through 
the  Ionian  Islands  ;  the  night  passed  on  the  Sicil- 
ian coast  with  jEtna  heard  thundering  overhead 
through  the  dark,  in  the  third  book  ;  the  island, 
in  the  fifth  book,  which  is  made  the  goal  round 
which  the  racing-boats  row ;  the  fleet  entering 
the  mouth  of  the  Tiber  while  the  calm  morning 
lies  ruddy  on  the  sea ;  —  these  are  a  few  which 
come  to  mind. 


NATURE  IN  LUCRETIUS  AND   VIRGIL.    165 

But  it  is  in  the  many  similes  scattered  through- 
out the  ^Eneid  that  the  Virgilian  grace  and 
tenderness  is  seen  at  its  best.  It  has  been  the 
fashion  with  the  commentators  to  trace  back 
every  one  of  Virgil's  similes  to  Homer  or  some 
other  Greek  poet.  And  the  two  I  shall  now  give 
have  not  wholly  escaped  this  imputation,  though 
there  seems  small  foundation  for  it  in  their  case. 

In  the  boat-race,  when  Mnestheus,  having  run 
his  boat  into  a  narrow  and  sheltered  passage 
among  rocks,  has  with  difficulty  scraped  through 
and  shot  again  into  open  sea,  this  is  Virgil's  com- 
parison :  — 

"  As  a  dove  scared  suddenly  from  a  cave, 
Where  she  has  her  home  and  dear  nestlings  in  the  crannied 

rock, 

Hurries  fieldward  in  her  flight,  and  with  flurried  pinions 
Loudly  flaps  the  roof —  soon  gliding  in  calm  air 
Skims  her  smooth  way,  sailing  aloof  on  moveless  wings." 

Again,  when  JEneas,  led  by  the  Sibyl,  descends 
to  the  nether  world,  and  arrives  at  the  shores  of 
the  river  Styx,  the  ghosts  of  the  dead  come  flock- 
ing round  him  in  crowds  :  — 

"  Numerous  as  the  leaves  in  the  woods  that  at  first  touch  of  au- 
tumn's cold 

Gliding  fall ;  or  numerous  as  the  birds  that  flock  together  shore 
ward  from  the  deep, 

When  wintry  weather  drives  them  across  the  sea,  and  send* 
thsm  into  sunny  lands." 

The  full  beauty,  however,  of  passages  like  these 
cannot  be  felt  when  they  are  detached  from  the 
whole  scene  in  which  they  are  inlaid.  JEneas 


166    NATURE  IN  LUCRETIUS  AND   VIRGIL. 

traveling  far  into  the  nether  gloom,  through 
Pluto's  empty  halls  and  ghastly  realms  of  the 
dead,  is  a  picture  almost  too  dismal.  But  how 
exquisitely  does  Virgil  relieve  his  own  heart  and 
that  of  the  reader,  by  letting  in  on  that  sad  world 
these  glimpses  of  a  land  still  gladdened  oy  the 
sun ! 

If  you  compare  Virgil  with  Homer,  where  they 
describe  the  same  natural  objects,  or  even  where 
the  Latin  poet  borrows  his  similes  directly  from 
the  Greek,  you  cannot  but  feel  how  wide  is  the 
difference  between  them.  There  is  no  more  the 
entire  outwardness,  the  self-forgetting  serenity  of 
Homer's  descriptions,  the  colorless  transparency 
as  of  a  mountain  range,  whose  every  stone  and 
blade  of  grass  lies  reflected  in  the  clear  depths  of 
an  unmoving  lake.  Received  into  Virgil's  heart 
the  outward  world  becomes  colored  with  some  of 
the  melancholy  of  the  poet  and  his  time.  Not 
that  to  Virgil's  eye  there  was  any  sadness  in  Nat- 
ure herself,  but  in  his  hands  Nature  becomes  so 
humanized,  it  so  lends  itself  to  human  joys  and 
sorrows,  that  these  cast  their  own  gleams,  and 
still  more  their  shadows,  on  that,  in  itself,  unim- 
passioned  countenance.  This  sympathy  between 
man  and  Nature  Virgil  apprehended  more  feel- 
ingly than  any  other  Roman  poet ;  and  in  this, 
as  in  so  many  other  things,  we  find  in  him  an 
anticipation  of  the  modern  time.  As  compared 
with  Lucretius,  Virgil  deals  with  Nature  in  a  less 
sublime,  but  more  human  way.  Lucretius  de- 


NATURE  IK  LUCRETIUS  AND   VIRGIL.    167 

mands  the  explanation  of  Nature  and  her  proc- 
esses, Virgil  seeks  to  enter  into  her  feeling,  to 
catch  her  sentiment.  As  a  French  author  has 
expressed  it :  "  Lucretius  is  not  so  much  arrested 
by  the  beauty  of  Nature,  as  roused  by  its  mys- 
tery, to  extort  the  secret  of  it.  I  admire  thee,  he 
seems  to  say,  but  on  condition  that  I  may  inves- 
tigate and  understand  thee."  In  Lucretius  man 
and  Nature  stand  over  against  each  other,  ob- 
server and  observed  :  they  do  not  meet  and  inter- 
penetrate each  other.  Between  Virgil  and  the 
outward  world  there  is  no  such  philosophic  bar- 
rier ;  his  feelings  flow  freely  forth  to  it,  and  there 
find  more  or  less  satisfaction, — satisfaction  as 
from  a  familiar  companion ;  whether  familiar  by 
the  associations  of  childhood  or  through  the  cher- 
ished learning  of  later  years. 

Lucretius  had,  as  we  know,  a  philosophic  faith 
about  Nature,  which  satisfied  his  understanding, 
if  it  did  not  satisfy  what  was  deeper  in  him  than 
understanding  —  that  high  imagination  and  poetic 
instinct  which  at  times  craved  a  more  spiritual 
interpretation.  Virgil,  on  the  other  hand,  had  no 
consistent  theory  regarding  that  Nature  which  he 
apprehended  so  feelingly.  In  general  he  acqui- 
esced in  the  orthodox  mythology  which  he  had 
received  from  the  tradition  of  the  poets.  And 
yet,  while  he  accepted  it  for  poetic,  or  even  patri- 
otic reasons,  he  must,  when  he  thought  of  it,  have 
felt  strange  misgivings.  For  the  mythologic  faith 
had  entirelv  ceased  to  be  real  to  himself  or  to  his 


168    NATURE  IN  LUCRETIUS  AND    VIRGIL. 

educated  countrymen.  That  he  longed  at  times 
to  penetrate  the  secret  of  Nature,  and  to  know 
the  causes  of  things,  he  himself  assures  us.  But 
there  is  no  evidence  in  his  poetry  that  he  ever 
rose  to  as  clear  a  conception  of  one  all-ruling 
Divine  Power  as  even  Cicero  had  probably 
reached.  There  are,  however,  two  well-known 
passages,  one  in  the  fourth  Georgic,  the  other  in 
the  sixth  JSneid,  in  which  Virgil  expresses  a 
mystic  and  pantheistic  theory  as  to  an  all-pervad- 
ing life  of  the  world,  which,  if  it  cannot  be  called 
his  philosophic  belief,  seems  to  have  been  to  him 
at  least  more  than  a  mere  poetic  fancy.  Lucre- 
tius, impelled  by  the  craving  of  his  imagination 
for  life,  not  death,  had  in  the  opening  of  his  poem 
and  elsewhere  allowed  such  a  feeling,  as  it  were, 
to  escape  him,  but  had  never  recognized  it  as  an 
article  of  his  faith.  In  Virgil  it  approaches  more 
nearly  to  a  consciously  held  belief,  or  at  least  to 
a  possible  solution  of  the  mystery  of  Nature.  It 
has  been  reserved  for  modern  times  to  give  fuller 
expression  to  the  same  tendency  of  thought, 
sometimes  as  a  mere  feeling,  sometimes  as  a  con- 
viction. But  however  such  a  view  may  have  ex- 
pressed passing  phases,  either  of  thought  or  feel- 
ing, it  has  never,  either  now  or  in  ancient  times, 
approached  to  be  a  solution  which  can  satisfy  at 
once  reason,  heart,  and  conscience. 

Since  these  remarks  on  Virgil  were  in  the 
press,  Professor  Sellar's  work  on  Virgil  has  ap- 
peared. If  I  could  have  read  it  before  writing 


NATURE  IN  LUCRETIUS  AND   VIRGIL.    169 

the  above  pages,  I  should  probably  have  said 
more  of  Virgil's  treatment  of  Nature,  or  less. 
As  it  is,  I  have  allowed  what  I  had  said  to  re- 
main unchanged.  Those  who  wish  to  see  this 
and  every  other  aspect  of  Virgil's  poetry  treated 
in  the  most  thorough  and  instructive  way,  will 
be  amply  rewarded  by  the  study  of  Professor 
Sellar's  book. 


CHAPTER  XL 

NATURE   IN  CHAUCER,   SHAKESPEARE,    AND 
MILTON. 

To  pass  from  the  Virgilian  view  of  Nature  to 
that  of  our  earliest  English  poet,  though  it 
brings  us  nearer  our  own  age  in  time,  is  really  to 
recede  from  it  in  feeling  to  a  remote  and  primi- 
tive antiquity.  No  poet  ever  loved  Nature  more 
than  Chaucer  did ;  but  it  was  with  a  simple,  un- 
l  reflective,  child-like  love.  The  Morning  Star  of 
English  Song,  as  he  has  been  called,  man  of  the 
world  and  skilled  in  affairs,  at  home  in  courts 
and  with  the  great,  conversant  with  the  ways  of 
all  men,  high  and  low,  could  turn  aside  from  the 
gorgeous  Jtayigerfc  that  filled  his  poetic  vision, 
from  the  profusawXpf  mediaeval  ceremonies  and 
cavalcade,  tof  t^n  processions  witji  soldiers  in 
armor,  caparisoned  horse%  and*bmizened  ladies, 
from  gallant  knights  with  lordly  manners,  and 
hom«^country-people,  from  sights  and  stories 
fetchm^orif  so^nyj^nds,  —  to  dwell  tenderly  on 
the  plain  sights  and  sounds  of  external  nature, 
and  to  sing  of  them  with  the  transparency  and 
sweetness  of  a  child.  It  was  Nature  in  her  "  first 
^ptention,"  her  most  obvious  aspects,  that  at« 


CHAUCER,   SHAKESPEARE,  MILTON.      171 

tracted  him.  Once,  indeed,  in  the  "  Assembly  of 
Foules,"  he  speaks  of  "  that  noble  Goddesse  of 
Nature."  This,  however,  is  not  his  usual  lan- 
guage, but  rather  a  conventional  way  of  speaking 
caught  from  the  Latin  poets  he  had  read.  Again, 
in  a  more  serious  strain,  the  same  poem  speaEs 
thus :  — 

"  Nature,  the  vicare  of  the  Almightie  Lord ; " 
but  it  is  not  on  Nature  as  a  great  whole,  much 
less  as  an  abstraction,  that  his  thought  usually 
dwells.  It  is  the  outer  world  in  its  most  concrete 
forms  and  objects,  with  which  he  delights  to  in- 
terweave his  poetry — the  homely  scenes  of  South 
England,  the  oaks  and  other  forest  trees,  the 
green  meadows,  quiet  fields,  and  comfortable 
farms,  as  well  as  the  great  castles  where  the  no- 
bles dwelt.  One  associates  him  with  the  green 
lanes  and  downs  of  Surrey  and  Kent,  their  natu- 
ral copsewoods  and  undulating  greenery.  I  know 
not  that  the  habitual  forms  of  English  landscape, 
those  which  are  most  rural  and  most  unchanged, 
have  ever  since  found  a  truer  poet,  one  who  so 
brings  before  the  mind  the  scene  and  the  spirit 
of  it  un  colored  by  any  intervention  of  his  own 
thought  or  sentiment.  And  his  favorite  season 
—  it  is  the  May-time.  Of  this  he  is  never  tired 
of  singing.  When  there  comes  a  really  spring- 
like day  in  May,  the  east  wind  gone,  and  the 
west  wind  blowing  softly,  the  leaves  coming  out, 
and  the  birds  singing,  at  such  a  season  one  feels 
instinctively  this  is  the  Chaucer  atmosphere  and 


172  NATURE  IN  CHAUCER, 

time.  One  passage  has  been  cited  in  a  former 
chapter  in  which  Chaucer  speaks  of  the  daisy 
very  lovingly.  Other  passages  might  be  cited  in 
which  he  turns  again  and  again  to  the  same 
flower,  proving  that  it  was  a  favorite  with  one 
poet  before  either  Burns  or  Wordsworth. 

Let  me  give  one  more  passage  which  gives  the 
characteristic  landscape  of  Chaucer  and  his  feel- 
ing about  it :  — 

"  When  shoures  sote  of  rain  descended  soft, 
Causing  the  ground  fele  times  and  oft 
Up  for  to  give  many  a  wholesome  air, 
And  every  plaine  was  y-clothed  fair 

"  With  newe  green,  and  maketh  smalle  flow'rs 
To  springen  here  and  there  in  field  and  mead 
So  very  good  and  wholesome  be  the  show'rs, 
That  they  renewen  that  was  old  and  dead 
In  winter  time,  and  out  of  every  seed 
Springeth  the  herbe,  so  that  every  wight 
Of  this  season  waxeth  right  glad  and  light. 


"  Up  I  rose  three  houres  after  twelfe 
About  the  springing  of  the  gladsome  day, 
And  on  I  put  my  gear  and  mine  array, 
And  to  a  pleasant  grove  I  'gan  to  pass 
Long  ere  the  bright^  sun  uprisen  was  ; 

"In  which  were  cake's  great,  straight  as  a  line, 
Under  the  which  the  grass  so  fresh  of  hue 
Was  newly  sprung ;  and  an  eight  foot  or  nine 
Every  tree  well  from  his  fellow  grew, 
With  branches  broad  laden  with  leave's  new, 
That  sprungen  out  against  the  sunne  sheen, 
Some  very  red,  and  some  a  glad  light  green, 

"Which  (as  me  thought)  was  a  right  pleasant  sight; 
And  eke  the  birdes  songes  for  to  hear 


SHAKESPEARE,  AND  MILTON.  173 

Would  have  rejoiced  any  earthly  wight ; 
And  I,  that  could  not  yet  in  no  mannere 
Hearen  the  nightingale  of  all  the  year, 
Full  busily  hearkened  with  heart  and  ear. 
If  I  her  voice  perceive  could  anywhere." 

This  is  exactly  the  Chaucer  landscape.  The 
forest  trees  are  described  each  after  their  kiad ; 
even  the  varieties  of  color  of  oak  leaves  in  spring- 
time he  notes,  some  coming  out  "very  red,"  some 
of  a  golden  green  hue  —  a  fact  not  noticed,  as  far 
as  I  remember,  by  any  other  poet ;  the  soft  green 
grass,  as  soft  as  velvet  under  foot,  he  is  never 
done  praising;  the  note  of  each  song-bird  he 
knows  and  delights  in.  These,  with  here  and 
there  a  quaint  old  garden  described,  such  is  the 
scenery  in  which  his  human  portraits  are  inlaid. 
He  is  altogether  one  of  the  most  amply  descriptive 
of  English  poets  till  we  arrive  at  quite  recent 
times.  And  it  is  one  sign  of  the  permanence 
and  stability  of  England,  even  amidst  all  change, 
that  among  the  copsewoods  of  Kent  and  the  lanes 
of  Surrey  just  such  scenes  may  be  seen  any  spring- 
day  now  as  Chaucer  loved  to  describe  nearly  five 
hundred  years  ago.  This  unchanged  landscape 
is  everywhere  in  his  poetry  blended  with  the 
mediaeval  manners  and  costumes  that  have  long 
since  passed,  as  a  modern  poet,  in  phrase  like 
Chaucer's  own,  has  well  sung :  — 

"  He  listeneth  to  the  lark, 

Whose  song  comes  with  the  sunshine  through  the  dark 
Of  painted  glass,  in  leaden  lattice  bound, 
He  listeneth  and  he  laugheth  at  the  sound, 
Then  writeth  in  a  book  like  any  clerk." 


174  NATURE  IN  CHAUCER, 

SHAKESPEARE. 

*  The  drama  is  the  last  form  of  poetry  to  which 
we  would  turn  in  hope  of  finding  rural  objects 
and  scenery  described.  Yet  it  is  astonishing  how 
much  of  this  kind  can  be  culled  from  a  careful 
search  through  Shakespeare's  plays.  Indeed  it 
has  been  remarked  how  much  of  out-of-doors  life 
there  is  in  Shakespeare's  dramas,  how  much  of 
the  action  is  carried  on  under  the  open  sky.  No 
doubt  the  pressure  of  human,  action  and  emotion 
is  too  absorbing  to  admit  of  detailed  description 
—  in  most  cases  of  more  than  passing  allusions. 
Yet  engrossed  though  he  is  with  stirring  events 
and  thrilling  emotions  and  powerful  human  char- 
acters, it  is  wonderful  how  many  are  the  side- 
glances  that  he  and  his  characters  cast  at  the 
Nature  that  surrounds  them.  And  these  glances 
are  like  everything  else  in  him,  rapid,  vivid,  and 
intense.  As  has  been  said,  natural  scenes  uhe 
BO  paints  by  occurrences,  by  allusions,  by  the 
emotions  of  his  characters,  that  we  seem  to  see 
them  before  our  eyes,  and  to  live  in  them." 
There  is  hardly  one  of  his  plays  in  which  the 
season  and  the  scene  is  not  flashed  upon  the  mind 
by  a  single  stroke  more  vividly  than  it  could  be 
by  the  most  lengthened  description :  — 

"  Lady !  by  yonder  silver  moon  I  swear, 
That  tips  with  silver  all  the  fruit-tree  tops." 

How  these  few  words  shed  round  us  all  the 
loveliness  of  the  Italian  night!     Or  that  other 


SHAKESPEARE,  AND  MILTON.  175 

where  the  moonshine  of  ^  the  warm  Summer  night 
brightens  the  last  scenes  of  the  "Merchant  of 
Venice,"  and  calls  up,  as  only  moonlight  can,  all 
wild  and  fascinating  memories  of  legend  and  ro- 
mance :  — 

"Lorenzo.  The  moon  shines  bright :  In  such  a  night  as  this, 
When  the  sweet  wind  did  gently  kiss  the  trees, 
And  they  did  make  no  noise  ;  in  such  a  night 
Troilus,  methinks,  mounted  the  Trojan  walls, 
And  sigh'd  his  soul  toward  the  Grecian  tents, 
Where  Cressid  lay  that  night. 

*  Jessica.  In  such  a  night 

Did  Thisbe  fearfully  o'ertrip  the  dew ; 
And  saw  the  lion's  shadow  ere  himself, 
And  ran  dismayed  away. 

"Lorenzo.  In  such  a  night 

Stood  Dido  with  a  willow  in  her  hand 
Upon  the  wild  sea-banks,  and  waft  her  love 
To  come  again  to  Carthage." 
f 

A  recent  critic  has  spoken  of  the  Poet-Laure- 
ate's "  wonderful  skill  in  creating  a  perfectly  real 
and  living  scene  —  such  as  always  might,  and 
perhaps  somewhere  does,  exist  in  external  nature 
—  for  the  theatre  of  the  feeling  he  is  about  to 
embody,  and  yet  a  scene  every  feature  of  which 
helps  to  make  the  emotion  more  real  and  vivid." 
Careful  students  of  Shakespeare  know  how  truly 
these  words  apply  to  almost  every  one  of  his 
plays.  He  leaves  not  only  the  impression  of  each 
character  deeply  graven  on  your  memory;  but 
the  season  and  the  scenery  which  encompassed 
them,  though  perhaps  not  above  a  line  or  two  are 
given  to  them,  rise  before  us  almost  as  indelibly. 


176  NATURE  IN  CHAUCER, 

To  take  one  sample  out  of  many.  In  "  Mac* 
beth,"  for  instance,  how  does  the  scenery  at  every 
turn  answer  to  the  action  and  the  emotion !  For 
the  first  appearance  of  the  witches  there  is  the 
blasted  heath,  the  thunder  and  lightning;  then, 
as  the  key-note  to  Lady  Macbeth's  fell  purpose, 
there  is  — 

"  The  raven  himself  is  hoarse 
That  croaks  the  fatal  entrance  of  Duncan 
Under  my  battlements." 

But  when  King  Duncan  himself,  with  his  retinue, 
appears,  the  whole  aspect  of  things  is  changed, 
and  the  gracious  disposition  of  the  old  king  comes 
out  very  naturally  in  the  view  he  takes  of  the 
castle  in  which  he  was  so  soon  to  meet  his 
doom :  — 

"  This  castle  has  a  pleasant  ?eat ;  the  air 

Nimbly  and  sweetly  recommends  itself  * 

Unto  our  gentle  senses." 

Banquo  replies :  — 

"  This  guest  of  summer, 
The  temple-haunting  martlet,  does  approve 
By  his  loved  mansionry  that  the  heaven's  breath 
Smells  wooingly  here  :  no  jutty,  frieze, 
Buttress,  nor  coign  of  vantage,  but  this  bird 
Hath  made  his  pendent  bed  and  procreant  cradle ; 
Where  they  most  breed  and  haunt,  I  have  observed, 
The  air  is  delicate." 

The  castle,  with  its  buttresses  and  battlements, 
its  high  gables  and  overhanging  towers,  lends 
itself  as  readily  to  the  pleasant  humor  cf  the 
kindly  king  that  calm  afternoon,  as  it  will  do  to 
the  horror  and  the  gloom  of  the  morrow.  Then 


SHAKESPEARE,  AND  MILTON.  177 

the  night  in  which  the  murder  was  done  is  quite 
such  a  night  as  often  comes  in  dead  winter,  yet 
fits  in  so  well  with  the  deed  and  the  feeling  it 
awakened  in  men's  hearts. 

"  Lennox.    The  night  has  been  unruly  :  where  we  lay 

Our  chimneys  were  blown  down  ;  and,  as  they  say, 
Lamentings  heard  i'  the  air ;  strange  screams  of  death  • 
And  other  prodigies. 

Macb.  'T  was  a  rough  night. 

Len.      My  young  remembrance  cannot  parallel 
A  fellow  to  it." 

This  is  the  talk  that  passes  just  before  the  mur- 
der is  known.  And  after  it  is  known,  this  is  the 
kind  of  day  that  follows  : 

"By  the  clock,  't  is  day, 
And  yet  dark  night  strangles  the  traveling  lamp." 

Again,  as  twilight  brings  on  the  night  which 
is  to  see  Banquo  taken  out  of  the  way,  Macbeth 
exclaims  — 

"  Come,  seeling  night, 
Skarf  up  the  tender  eye  of  pitiful  day  J 
And,  with  thy  bloody  and  invisible  hand, 
Cancel,  and  tear  to  pieces,  that  great  bond 
Which  keeps  me  pale !  —  Light  thickens,  and  the  crow 
Makes  wing  to  the  rooky  wood  ; 
Good  things  of  day  begin  to  droop  and  drowse, 
While  night's  black  agents  to  their  prey  do  rouse." 

But  why  go  on  quoting  passages,  which  all  re- 
member, to  show  how  exactly  all  through  this  or 
the  other  dramas  the  face  of  Nature  answers  to 
the  deeds  and  the  emotions  of  the  human  agents, 
and  how  a  line  —  sometimes  a  word  in  the  midst 
of  a  rapid  dialogue  -  lets  in  the  open  air,  and  all 
12 


178  NATURE  IN  CHAUCER, 

the  surrounding  nature,  more  tellingly  than  pages 
of  description  could  have  done.  But  between 
Shakespeare  and  a  modern  poet  there  is  this 
great  difference,  that,  while  in  the  latter  this 
correspondence  is  attained  by  careful  study  and 
elaborate  forethought,  in  Shakespeare  we  may 
weU  believe  that  the  white  heat  of  imagination 
which  created  and  moulded  the  characters  in  all 
their  throng  of  emotion  struck  off,  at  the  same 
moment,  almost  unconsciously,  the  aspects  of  ex- 
ternal nature  which  were  proper  to  them. 

The  forest  was  evidently  with  Shakespeare  a 
favorite  resort,  bringing  back  to  him,  as  it  would, 
recollections  of  his  youthful  deer-huntings.  In 
his  day  the  forest  was  not  far  off  or  strange,  but 
still  a  familiar  place,  as  we  are  told,  coming  up 
very  close  to  the  gates  of  the  country  town. 
From  Stratford-on-Avon  he  had  not  far  to  go 
before  he  found  himself  in  the  midst  of  the  forest 
of  fine  oaks,  the  survivors  of  which  are  still  seen 
all  about  in  the  parks  and  lanes  of  Warwickshire. 
So  when  he  would  spend  the  summer  night  in  the 
most  extravagant  mirth  and  drollery,  it  is  out  to 
the  wild  wood  that  he  leads  his  company ;  when 
he  would  surround  the  grave  thoughts  of  the  ex- 
iled Duke  and  the  melancholy  of  Jaques  with  a 
congenial  background,  he  places  them  in  the  For- 
est of  Arden,  where  free  Nature  fits  into  the  mood, 
Hiid  brings  soothing  to  their  mental  maladies. 

"  Hath  not  old  custom  made  this  life  more  sweet 
Than  that  of  painted  pomp  ?    Are  not  these  woods 
More  free  from  peril  than  the  envious  court  ?  " 


SHAKESPEARE,  AND  MILTON.  179 

In  how  many  ways  throughout  these  plays  are 
the  aspects  of  human  life  set  forth  by  their  re- 
semblances in  Nature ! 

"  Jul     The  current  that  with  gentle  murmur  glides, 

Thou  know'st,  being  stopp'd,  impatiently  doth  rage  ; 

But,  when  his  fair  course  is  not  hindered, 

He  makes  sweet  music  with  the  enameled  stones, 

Giving  a  gentle  kiss  to  every  sedge 

He  overtaketh  in  his  pilgrimage ; 

And  so  by  many  winding  nooks  he  strays 

With  willing  sport,  to  the  wild  ocean. 

Then  let  me  go,  and  hinder  not  my  course, 

I  '11  be  as  patient  as  a  gentle  stream, 

And  make  my  pastime  of  each  weary  step, 

Till  the  last  step  have  brought  me  to  my  love  ; 

And  then  I  '11  rest,  as,  after  much  turmoil, 

A  blessed  soul  doth  in  Elysium." 

Shakespeare,  whether  from  watching  the  sea 
from  the  shore,  or  from  sailing  on  it,  was  evi- 
dently at  home  in  describing  it. 

The  sea  storm  in  "  Pericles"  (Act  iii.  Scene  1) 
is  full  of  life  and  movement,  made  all  the  more 
terrible  by  the  death  of  the  queen  on  shipboard 
when  the  tempest  is  at  its  height.  They  are  off 
the  coast  of  Tharsus,  and  the  ship  is  driving  in 
upon  it  unmanageably,  and  will  not  answer  to  the 
helm  •  — 

"Isr  Sailor.  —  Slack  the  bolins  there;  thou  wilt  not,  wilt 
:hou  ?  Blow  and  split  thyself. 

2d  Sailer. — But  sea  room,  an  the  brine  *nd  cloudy  billow 
kiss  the  moon,  I  care  not. 

1st  Sailor.  —  Sir,  your  queen  must  overboard ;  the  sea  works 
high,  the  \\ind  is  loud,  and  will  not  lie  till  the  ship  be  cNared  of 
ihe  dead." 


180  NATURE  IN  CHAUCER, 

The  human  situation  and  the  conflict  of  the 
elements  combine  each  to  heighten  to  the  utmost 
the  terror  and  despair  of  the  other.  The  con- 
junction is  no  doubt  finely  imagined.  But  when 
a  modern  poet  writes  :  "  No  poetry  of  shipwreck 
and  the  sea  has  ever  equaled  the  great  scene  of 
"  Pericles,"  no  such  note  of  music  was  ever  struck 
out  of  the  clash  and  contention  of  tempestuous 
elements,  one  cannot  but  feel  that  he  indulges  in 
exaggeration. 

For  coast  scenery  the  description  of  Dover 
cliffs  stands  almost  alone. 

But  while  with  the  forest  and  the  sea-coast 
Shakespeare's  early  life  had  made  him  familiar, 
he  had  not,  as  far  as  we  know,  had  much,  if  any, 
experience  of  mountains.  Of  Nature,  as  of  man, 
he  painted  for  the  most  part  what  he  had  seen 
and  known  —  idealizing  it  of  course,  but  having 
caught  the  first  hint  from  reality.  And  mount- 
ains formed  no  part  of  the  Warwickshire  or  in- 
deed of  the  England  which  he  knew.  Therefore 
while  we  find  many  notices  of  the  fields,  the 
forest,  and  the  sea,  and  of  the  way  they  affect 
human  imaginations,  there  is  no  allusion  to  the 
effect  of  mountain  scenery.  It  could  not  have 
been  said  of  him  :  — 

"  The  power  of  hills  is  on  thee." 

On  this  fact  Mr  Ruskin  has  this  characteristic 
reflection,  that  Shakespeare  having  been  ordained 
to  take  a  full  view  of  total  human  nature,  to  be 
perfectly  equal  and  universal  in  his  portraiture 


SHAKESPEARE,  AND  MILTON.  18* 

of  maa,  could  be  allowed  no  mountains,  nor  evet> 
supreme  natural  beauty.  For  had  lie  been  reared 
among  mountains  they  would  have  overbalanced 
him,  have  laid  too  powerful  a  grasp  on  his  im- 
agination, have  made  him  lean  too  much  their 
way,  and  so  would  have  marred  his  universality. 
Whether  we  take  this  view  of  it  or  not,  it  is  cer- 
tain that  the  power  of  the  mountains  is  not  ex- 
pressed in  that  poetry  which  expresses  almost 
every  other  conceivable  thing,  and  that  the  mount- 
ain rapture  had  to  lie  dumb  for  two  more  cent- 
uries before  it  found  utterance  in  English  song. 
In  "  Cymbeline "  the  two  noble  youths  are 
brought  up  in  caves  among  the  mountains,  but 
from  this  their  characters  receive  no  touch  of 
freedom  or  grandeur,  but  are  enhanced  only  by 
having  taken  no  taint  of  degradation  from  so  base 
a  dwelling-place.  "  The  only  thing  belonging  to 
the  hills,"  says  Mr.  Ruskin,  "  that  Shakespeare 
seems  to  feel  as  noble,  was  the  pine-tree,  and  that 
was  because  he  had  seen  in  Warwickshire  clumps 
of  pine  occasionally  rising  on  little  sandstone 
mounds  above  the  lowland  woods."  He  touches 
on  this  tree  fondly  again  and  again. 

"As  rough 

Their  royal  blood  enchafed,  as  the  rud'st  wind, 
That  by  his  top  doth  take  the  mountain  pine, 
And  make  him  stoop  to  the  vale." 

Again:  — 

"  You  may  as  well  forbid  the  mountain  pines 
To  wave  their  high  tops,  and  to  make  no  noise 
When  they  are  fretted  with  the  gusts  of  heaven.*' 


182  NATURE  IN  CHAUCER, 

And  again :  — 

"But  when  from  under  this  terrestrial  bank 
He  fires  the  proud  tops  of  the  eastern  pines." 

He  knew  little  then  of  the  mountains  by  ex- 
perience ;  but  had  he  known  them  more,  though 
they  might  have  added  some  sternness  to  his 
genius,  some  awe  to  his  thoughts  about  life,  they 
might  perhaps  have  narrowed  his  range  and  made 
his  view  of  men  less  universal  and  serene.  So 
Mr.  Ruskin  thinks.  And  yet  perhaps  it  is  hardly 
safe  so  to  speculate  about  Shakespeare.  For  could 
not  the  mind  which  took  in  and  harmonized  so 
many  things,  have  made  room  for  this  other  in- 
fluence, without  deranging  its  proportions  and 
marring  its  universality  ? 

Though  Shakespeare  sometimes  describes,  in  a 
general  way,  countries  he  had  never  seen,  as  in 
that  exquisite  description  of  Sicily  in  the  "  Win- 
ter's Tale,"  — 

"  The  climate 's  delicate,  the  air  most  sweet, 
Fertile  the  isle,  the  temple  much  surpassing 
The  common  praise  it  bears  "  — 

yet  whenever  he  descends  to  details  of  country 
life  and  scenery,  as  he  so  often  does,  every  word 
bears  the  stamp  of  having  been  brought,  not  from 
books,  but  from  what  his  own  eyes  had  seen  in 
the  neighborhood  of  Stratf ord-upon- Avon .  How 
familiar  he  was  with  the  garden  and  all  its  proc- 
esses is  seen  by  many  a  metaphor  and  allusion, 
perhaps  nowhere  more  notably  than  in  the  4th 
Scene  of  the  3d  Act  of  "  Richard  II.,"  where 


SHAKESPEARE,  AND  MILTON.  183 

in  the  Duke  of  York's  garden  ^t  Langley  the 
discourse  of  the  gardener  and  his  men  on  the 
management  of  fruit-trees  is  turned  to  political 
meaning.  A  disordered  state  is  a  neglected  and 
unweeded  garden,  the  pruning  and  bleeding  of 
fruit-trees  are  the  restraining  great  and  growing 
men  in  the  state,  and  all  the  operations  are  so 
described  and  applied  as  only  an  adept  in  garden- 
ing could  do ;  or  again,  there  is  the  well-known 
metaphor  in  Wolsey's  speech  where  he  likens 
his  blushing  honors  to  blossoms  nipt  by  frost. 
The  process  of  grafting  furnishes  many  a  met- 
aphor for  human  doings.  All  the  ordinary  forest 
trees,  the  oak,  the  elm,  the  pine,  the  willow, 
come  in  with  the  easy  handling  of  one  who  knew 
them  from  boyhood.  Every  bird,  the  rook,  the 
chough,  the  throstle,  the  ousel-cock  or  blackbird, 
the  nightingale, 

"  The  finch,  the  sparrow,  and  the  lark, 
The  plain-song  cuckoo  gray  "  — 

all  find  familiar  notice ;  and  perhaps  of  these  we 
might  select  the  lark  as  his  favorite,  to  judge  by 
the  frequency  of  allusion  fo  it. 

Though  garden  flowers  —  such  garden  flowers 
as  were  cultivated  in  his  time  —  are  not  passed 
over,  yet  much  more  noteworthy  is  the  loving 
way  in  which  Shakespeare  dwells,  or  rather 
makes  his  characters  dwell,  on  the  field-flowers. 
Almost  every  wild-flower  that  is  to  be  found  at 
this  day  in  the  meadows  and  woods  by  Avon  side 
aooks  out  from  some  part  01  other  of  his  poetry. 


184  NATURE  IN  CHAUCER, 

But  this  love  for  flowers,  it  has  been  noted,  he 
puts  in  the  mouth,  not  of  his  strong  heroic  char- 
acters, his  Henry  V.  or  Othello,  but  in  the  lips  of 
his  more  feminine  ones.  It  is  the  sentimental 
Duke  in  "  Twelfth  Night  "  who  exclaims  — 

"  That  strain  again  ;  it  had  a  dying  fall . 

Oh  !  it  came  o'er  my  ear  like  the  sweet  south, 
That  breathes  upon  a  bank  of  violets, 
Stealing,  and  giving  odor  "  — 

just  such  a  bank  as  may  be  seen  any  April  day 
under  the  Warwickshire  hedge-rows.  Every  one 
remembers  poor  Ophelia  and  her  flowers,  the 
flowers  with  which  Arviragus  promises  to  sweeten 
the  sad  grave  of  Fidele ;  and,  above  all,  the  won- 
derful scene  in  the  "  Winter's  Tale  "  where  Per- 
dita  presiding  at  the  sheep-shearing  feast  sorts 
the  flowers  according  to  the  age  of  the  guests, 
"flowers  of  winter,  rosemary  and  rue,"  to  the 
elders,  to  men  of  middle  age  flowers  of  middle 
summer  — 

"  Hot  lavender,  mints,  savory,  majoram, 
The  marigold,  that  goes  to  bed  with  the  sun, 
And  with  him  rises  weeping." 

And  for  her  fairest  friend  — 

"  I  would  I  had  some  flowers  o'  the  spring  that  might 
Become  your  time  of  day  ; 
Daffodils,  violets,  and  pale  primroses." 

Lastly,  the  song  which  winds  up  "  Love's  Labor 
Lost,"  —  with  what  lyric  sweetness  it  condenses 
how  much  of  flowery  spring  and  of  nipping  win- 
ter into  a  few  easy  lines  I  In  this  as  in  all  other 
mentions  of  wild-flowers  in  Shakespeare,  it  has 


SHAKESPEARE,  AND  MILTON.  185 

been  remarked  how  true  he  is  to  time  and  season, 
giving  to  each  flower  its  proper  season  and  haunt, 
and  sorting  them  all  with  the  careless  ease  of  one 
to  whom  they  were  among  the  most  familiar 
things.  In  this  he  contrasts  with  the  artistic 
but  not  accurate  assortment  of  flowers  in  the 
well-known  passage  of  "  Lycidas,"  where  Milton 
groups  in  one  posy  flowers  belonging  to  different 
seasons. 

On  the  whole,  though  Shakespeare  never  set 
himself  formally  to  study  or  describe  external 
Nature,  yet  his  dramas  are  full  of  her  presence 
and  her  works  —  not  taken  from  books  or  daintily 
tricked  out  by  art,  but  idealized  from  his  memory 
well  stored  with  country  scenes.  Again,  these 
are  given,  not  in  elaborate  descriptions,  but  in 
rapid  strokes,  and  side-glances,  vivid,  penetrating, 
intense,  thrown  off  from  the  heat  of  an  imagina- 
tion brooding  mainly  over  human  interests  and 
emotions.  And  perhaps  after  all  that  view  of 
Nature  is  the  truest,  healthiest,  manliest,  which 
does  not  pore  or  moralize  over  her  appearances, 
but  keeps  them  in  the  background,  putting  man 
into  the  foreground  and  making  him  the  central 
object.  As  Man  and  Nature  stand  over  against 
each  other,  and  are  evidently  made  each  for  each, 
it  may  be  that  not  apart  from  Man,  with  his  emo- 
tions and  his  destiny,  can  Nature  be  rightly  con- 
ceived and  portrayed. 


186  NATURE  IN  CHAUCER, 

MILTON. 

When  we  pass  from  the  images  of  Nature  that 
abound  in  Chaucer  and  in  Shakespeare  to  thosft 
which  Milton  furnishes,  the  transition  is  mueL 
the  same  as  when  we  pass  .from  the  scenery  of 
Homer  to  that  of  Virgil.  (  The  contrast  is  that 
between  natural  free-flowing  poetry,  in  which  the 
beauty  is  child-like  and  unconscious,  and  highly 
cultured  artistic  poetry,  which  produces  its  effects 
through  a  medium  of  learned  illustration,  ornate 
coloring,  and  stately  diction.  In  the  one  case 
Nature  is  seen  directly  and  at  first  hand,  with 
nothing  between  the  poet  and  the  object  except 
the  imaginative  emotion  under  which  he  works. 
In  the  other,^  Nature  is  apprehended  only  in  her 
"  second  intention,"  as  logicians  speak,  only  as 
she  appears  through  a  beautiful  haze,  compounded 
of  learning,  associations  of  the  past,  and  carefully 
selected  artistic  colors.  With  Milton,  Nature 
was  not  his  first  love,  but  held  only  a  secondary 
place  in  his  affections.  He  was  in  the  first  place 
a  scholar,  a  man  of  letters,  with  the  theologian 
and  polemic  latent  in  him.  A  lover  of  all  artistic 
beauty  he  was,  no  doubt,  and  of  Nature  mainly 
as  it  lends  itself  to  this  perception.  And  as  ia 
his  mode  of  apprehending  Nature,  such  is  the 
language  in  which  he  describes  her.  When  he 
.•eached  his  full  maturity  he  had  framed  for  him- 
self out  of  the  richness  of  his  genius  and  the  re- 
sources of  his  learning  a  style  elaborate  and  splen 


SHAKESPEARE,  AND  MILTON.  187 

did,  so  that  he  stands  unique  among  English 
poets,  "our  one  first-rate  master  in  the  grand 
style."  As  an  eminent  living  French  writer 
says,  —  "  For  rendering  things  he  has  the  unique 
word,  the  word  wfflch  is  a  discovery,"  and  "  he 
has  not  only  the  image  and  the  word,  he  has  the 
period  also,  the  large  musical  phrase,  somewhat 
laden  wifh  ornaments  and  intricate  with  inver- 
sions, but  bearing  all  along  with  it  in  its  superb 
undulation.  Above  all,  he  has  something  inde- 
scribably serene  and  victorious,  an  unfailing  level 
of  style,  power  indomitable."  This  admirable 
description  of  M.  Scherer  applies  mainly  to  Mil- 
ton's style,  as  it  was  fully  elaborated  in  his  great 
epic.  And  the  thought  has  sometimes  occurred, 
whether  this  magnificently  elaborated  style  can 
be  a  fit  vehicle  for  rendering  truly  the  simplicity, 
the  refreshingness  of  Nature,  — whether  the 
poet's  art,  from  its  very  opulence,  must  not  color 
too  much  the  clearness  and  transparency  of  the 
external  world.  However  this  may  be,  it  is  cer- 
tain that  it  is  not  to  his  maturer  poems,  with 
their  grandeur  of  style,  that  we  look  for  his  most 
vivid  renderings  of  scenery,  but  to  those  early 
poems,  which  had  more  native  grace  of  diction 
and  less  of  artistic  elaboration.  Nowhere  has 
Milton  shown  such  an  eye  for  scenery  as  in  those 
first  poems,  "  L' Allegro,"  "  II  Penseroso," ' "  Ly- 
cidas,"  and  "  Comus,"  composed  before  he  was 
thirty,  just  after  leaving  Cambridge,  while  he 
was  living  under  his  father's  roof  at  Horton,  in 


188  NATURE  IN  CHAUCER, 

Buckinghamshire.  During  the  five  years  of  coun- 
try life,  the  most  genial  *of  all  his  years,  amid 
his  incessant  study  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  poets, 
and  other  self-improvement,  his  heart  was  per- 
haps more  open  than  at  any  other  time  to  the 
rural  beauty  which  lay  around  him.  "  Conius  " 
and  "  Lycidas "  both  contain  fine  natural  ima- 
gery, yet  somewhat  deflected  by  the  artistic  frame- 
work in  which  it  is  set.  In  the  latter  poem,  in 
which  Milton,  adapting  the  idyllic  form  of  Virgil, 
fills  it  with  a  mightier  power,  classical  allusion 
and  mythology  are  strangely,  yet  not  unharmoni- 
ously,  blended  with  pictures  taken  from  English 
landscape.  Every  one  remembers  the  splendid 

( grouping  of  flowers  which  he  there  broiders  in. 

\  Of  this  catalogue  it  has  been  observed  that,  beau- 
tiful as  it  is,  it  violates  the  truth  of  nature,  as  it 
places  side  by  side  flowers  of  different  seasons 
which  are  never  seen  flowering  together.  It  ie 
in  his  two  "  descriptive  Lyrics  "  that  we  find  the 
clearest  proofs  of  an  eye  that  had  observed  Nat- 
ure at  first  hand  and  for  itself.  In  the  poem 
descriptive  of  mirth,  it  has  been  observed  that 
the  mirth  is  of  a  very  sedate  kind,  not  reaching 
beyond  a  "  trim  and  stately  cheerfulness."  The 
mythological  pedigrees  attached  both  to  mirth 
and  to  melancholy  strike  us  now  as  somewhat 
strange,  if  not  frigid ;  but,  with  this  allowance, 
Milton's  richly  sensuous  imagination  bodies  forth 
the  cheerfulness,  as  he  wished  to  portray  it,  in  a 
succession  of  images  unsurpassed  for  beauty.  Ic 


SHAKESPEARE,  AND  MILTON.  189 

the  lines  descriptive  of  these  images,  Art  and 
Nature  appear  perhaps  more  than  in  any  other  of 
Milton's  poems  in  perfect  equipoise.  The  images 
selected  are  the  aptest  vehicles  of  the  sentiment ; 
the  language  in  which  they  are  expressed  is  of 
the  most  graceful  and  musical ;  while  the  natural 
objects  themselves  are  seen  at  firsthand,  set  down 
with  their  edges  still  sharp,  and  uncolored  by  any 
tinge  of  bookish  allusion,  j  Aspects  of  English 
scenery,  one  after  another,  occur,  which  he  was 
the  first  poet  to  note,  and  which  none  since  could 
dare  to  touch,  so  entirely  has  he  made  them  his 
own.  The  mower  whetting  his  scythe,  —  who 
ever  hears  that  sound  coming  from  the  lawn  in 
the  morning  without  thinking  of  Milton  ?  "  The 
tanned  haycock  in  the  mead  ;  "the  cottage  chim- 
ney smoking  betwixt  two  aged  oaks ;  the  moon 

"  As  if  her  head  she  bowed, 
Stooping  through  a  fleecy  cloud;" 

the  shower  pattering 

"  On  the  ruffling  leaves,  * 

With  minute  drops  from  off  the  eaves  ;  " 

the  great  curfew-bell  heard  swinging  "  over  some 
wide  watered  shore ;  "  —  these  are  all  images 
takei  straight  from  English  landscape  which 
Milton  has  forever  enshrined  in  his  two  match- 
less poems. 

Of  these  two  poems, 'describing  the  bright  and 
the  thoughtful  aspects  of  Nature,  my  fiiend  Mr. 
Palgrave,  in  his  exquisite  collection  of  English 
Lyrics,  "The  Golden  Treasury,"  has  observed 


190  NATURE  IN  CHAUCER, 

that  these  are  the  earliest  pure  descriptive  lyrics 
in  our  language,  adding  that  it  is  a  striking  proof 
of  Milton's  astonishing  power  that  these  are  still 
the  best,  in  a  style  which  so  many  great  poets 
have  since  his  time  attempted. 

When,  after  a  poetic  silence  of  nearly  thirty 
years,  Milton,  old,  blind,  and  fallen,  as  ho 
thought,  on  evil  days,  addressed  himself  again  to 
poetry,  in  his  two  Epics,  and  in  his  Classic 
Drama,  he  gave  vent  to  all  that  was  lofty  and 
sublime  in  his  severe  nature,  but  he  returned  no 
more  to  rural  description.  Immense  scholarship, 
experience  of  men  and  of  affairs,  ripe  meditation 
on  things  human  and  divine,  —  all  these  he 
brought  to  his  later  work ;  but  the  simple  love 
of  Nature,  such  as  it  was  in  his  earlier  poems, 
has  disappeared,  or  is  overlaid  by  his  learning.1 

1  To  this  assertion  I  must  make  one  exception.  Since  these 
remarks  were  written,  my  attention  has  been  kindly  drawn  by 
Professor  Campbell  of  St.  Andrews  to  a  passage  in  the  ninth 
boo£  of  Paradise  Lost,  in  which  Milton  for  a  moment  reverts  to 
the  old  rural  freshness  in  something  of  the  manner  of  his 
youth.  It  is  the  place  where  the  Tempter  first  catches  sight  of 
Eve:  — 

"  Much  he  the  place  admired,  the  person  more. 
As  one  who  long  in  populous  city  pent, 
Where  houses  thick  and  sewers  annoy  the  air, 
Forth  issuing  on  a  summer's  morn  to  breathe 
Among  the  pleasant  villages  and  farms 
Adjoined,  from  each  thing  met  conceives  delight, 
The  smell  of  grain,  or  tedded  grass,  or  kine, 
Or  dairy,  each  rural  sight,  each  rural  sound  j 
If  chance  with  nymph-like  step  fair  virgin  pass, 
What  pleasing  seemed,  for  her  now  pleases  more, 


SHAKESPEARE,  AND  MILTON.  191 

She  most,  and  in  her  look  seems  all  delight : 
Such  pleasure  took  the  Serpent  to  behold 
This  flowery  flat,  the  sweet  recess  of  Eve 
Thus  early,  thus  alone." 

The  description  of  the  garden  of  Eden,  in  the 
fourth  book  of  "  Paradise  Lost,"  is  magnificent, 
hut  vague.  The  pomp  of  language  and  profusion 
of  images  leaves  on  the  imagination  no  definite 
picture.  You  have,  it  is  true,  "  in  narrow  room 
Nature's  whole  wealth,"  but  it  does  not  satisfy, 
as  many  a  humbler  but  real  scene  described  with 
a  few  strokes  satisfies.  Such  landscapes  in  poetry, 
entirely  projected  by  the  imagination  and  an- 
swering to  no  scene  on  earth,  are,  like  the  com- 
position pictures,  which  some  painters  delight  in, 
only  splendid  failures. 

There  is,  however,  another  use  made  of  Nature 
in  those  later  poems,  which  may  be  called  the 
geographical  use  of  it,  in  which  Milton  has  no 
rival.  His  vast  reading  enabled  him  to  bring 
together  similes  and  illustrations  from  every  land 
—  from  China,  India,  Tartary,  Cape  of  Good 
Hope ;  nor  from  these  only,  but  from  old  Rome, 
Greece,  Syria,  Babylon.  Such  images  from  many 
lands,  so  rich,  varied,  and  grandly  worded,  form 
one  of  the  most  permanent  attractions  of  "  Para- 
dise Lost  "  and  "  Paradise  Regained."  The  one 
real  inspired  creation  of  scenery,  if  scenery  it 
can  be  called,  which  "  Paradise  Lost "  contains, 
is  the  description  of  Hell.  'The  primeval  ele- 
ments of  the  world  are  drawn  upon,  the  unmeas- 


192  NATURE  IN  MILTON. 

arable  abyss  of  fire,  the  frozen  cataract,  every 
thing  vast  that  is  to  be  found  on  earth  is  here. 
From  things  of  earth  too  are  drawn  the  images 
that  set  forth  the  appearance  of  the  inhabitants 
—  the  fallen  angels  like  scathed  oaks  or  pines  on 
a  blasted  heath  —  Satan  ^imself  like  leviathan 
"  slumbering  on  the  Norway  foam,"  and  many 
another  image  from  Nature  taken  to  shadow  forth 
things  supernatural  or  infernal. 

But  if  we  wish  to  find  in  Milton  the  pure 
breath  of  the  country,  the  fragrance  of  the  fields, 
it  is  to  his  early  poems  we  must  return.  In  these, 
scholar  and  man  of  letters  though  he  was,  learn- 
ing and  art  had  not  excluded  Nature,  but  with  his 
eye  still  resting  on  actual  sights  of  the  country, 
he  describes  them  with  a  native  lightness  and 
grace  which  his  classic  style  only  makes  more 
expressive.  During  the  life  of  Milton,  other 
though  lesser  poets  had  given  expression  to  the 
love  of  Nature.  Such  were  William  Browne, 
author  of  "  Britannia's  Pastorals,"  and  Andrew 
Marvell,  whose  "  Poems  in  the  Country  "  con- 
tain here  and  there  graceful  expression  of  rural 
things. 

But  after  Milton  died  (1674),  rural  life  and 
Nature,  for  more  than  half  a  century,  disappeared 
from  English  poetry. 


CHAPTER  XII. 

BETUKN  TO  NATURE  BEGUN  BY  ALLAN  BAM- 
SAY  AND  THOMSON. 

THE  divorce  from  Nature  and  country  life 
which  marked  the  Poetry  of  the  closing  seven- 
teenth and  opening  eighteenth  centuries,  has 
often  been  subject  of  comment,  and  need  not  de- 
tain us  now.  Whatever  the  causes  of  this  divorce 
may  have  been,  it  is  beside  our  present  purpose 
to  inquire  into  them.  Enough  to  note  the  fact 
that  during  the  latter  part  of  Charles  II. 's  reign, 
and  during  the  succeeding  reigns  of  William, 
Queen  Anne,  and  the  first  George,  poetry  retired 
from  the  fields,  and  confined  herself  to  the  streets 
of  London.  If  she  ever  ventured  into  the  coun- 
try at  all,  she  did  not  wander  beyond  the  Twick- 
enham villa  or  Richmond  Hill.  While  first  Dry- 
den  and  then  Pope  were  in  the  ascendant,  the 
subjects  of  poetry  were  those  to  be  found  in  city 
life  and  in  social  man.  Nature,  Passion,  Imagin- 
ation, as  has  been  said,  were  dismissed ;  politics, 
jiarty  spirit  and  argument,  wit  and  satire,  criticism 
and  scientific  inquiry,  took  their  place. 

When  after  this  long  absence  Poetry  once  more 
left  the  suburbs  and  wandered  back  to  the  fields, 

13 


194        RETURN  TO  NATURE  BEGUN  BY 

she  took  with  her  this  great  gain,  —  the  power  to 
describe  the  things  of  nature  in  a  correcter  dic- 
tion and  more  beautiful  style  than  England  had 
before  known,  save  only  in  Milton's  descriptive 
lyrics.  It  was  in  the  Scottish  poet  Allan  Ram- 
say that  the  sense  of  .natural  beauty  first  re- 
appeared. Since  his  day  Nature,  which,  even 
when  felt  and  described  in  earlier  English  po- 
etry, had  held  a  place  altogether  subordinate  to 
man,  has  more  and  more  claimed  to  be  regarded 
in  poetry  as  almost  coequal  with  man.  Ramsay, 
whose  "  Gentle  Shepherd"  was  first  published  in 
1 725,  drew  his  inspiration  in  large  measure  from 
the  songs  and  ballads  of  his  native  country,  which, 
while  full  of  the  pathos  of  human  incident  and 
affection,  are  hardly  less  sensitive  to  the  looks  of 
earth  and  sky,  whether  stern  or  lovely.  It  was 
from  his  knowledge  of  rustic  life  and  his  love  of 
the  popular  song  that  his  inspiration  was  drawn. 
But  his  genuine  and  natural  instincts  were  over- 
laid by  some  knowledge  and  relish  of  the  arti- 
ficial literature  of  his  age.  The  result  is  a  kind 
of  composite  poetry,  in  which  Scotch  manners, 
feeling,  and  language  are  strangely  intermingled 
with  a  sort  of  Arcadian  veneer,  brought  from  the 
Eclogues  of  Virgil,  or  from  English  imitations  of 
these.  This  is  most  seen  in  Ramsay's  songs, 
where,  instead  of  preserving  the  precious  old 
melodies,  he  has  replaced  them  by  insipid  coun- 
terfeits of  his  own,  in  which  Jock  and  Jenny 
are  displaced  by  Damon  ,and  Chloe.  Though 


ALLAN  RAMSAY  AND  THOMSON.        195 

Borne  traces  of  false  taste  do  crop  out  here  and 
there,  even  in  the  dialogue  of  the  "  The  Gentle 
Shepherd,"  yet  these  are  far  fewer  than  in  the 
songs.  The  feelings  of  our  age  may  be  now  and 
then  offended  by  a  freedom  of  speech  that  bor- 
ders on  coarseness,  but  that  the  texture  of  the 
poem  is  stirring  and  human-hearted  is  proved  by 
the  hold  it  still  retains  on  the  Scottish  peasantry. 
If  here  and  there  a  false  note  mars  the  truth  of 
the  human  manners,  as  when  Scotch  Lowland 
shepherds  talk  of  playing  on  reeds  and  flutes, 
the  scenery  of  "  The  Gentle  Shepherd  "  is  true  to 
Nature  as  it  is  among  the  Pentland  Hills  :  — 

"  Gae  farder  up  the  burn  to  Babble's  How, 
Where  a'  the  sweets  o'  spring  and  summer  grow : 
Between  twa  birks,  out  o'er  a  little  linn 
The  water  fa's  an'  mak's  a  singin'  din ; 
A  pool  breast-deep,  beneath  as  clear  as  glass, 
Kisses,  wi'  easy  whirls,  the  bordering  grass. 
We  '11  end  our  washing  while  the  morning 's  cooL 
And  when  the  day  grows  het  we  '11  to  the  pool, 
There  wash  oursels  —  it 's  healthfu'  now  in  May, 
And  sweetly  cauler  on  so  warm  a  day." 

A  pool  in  a  burn  among  the  Lowland  hills  could 
hardly  be  more  naturally  described. 

Again,  one  of  the  shepherds  thus  invites  his 
love  — 

"  To  where  the  saugh-tree  shades  the  mennin-pool, 
I  '11  frae  the  hill  come  doun,  when  day  grows  cool. 
—  Keep  tryst,  and  meet  me  there." 

The  alder-tree  shading  the  minnow  pool — there 
is  a  real  piece  of  Lowland  scenery  brought  from 
the  outer  world  for  the  first  time  into  poetry. 


196        RETURN  TO  NATURE  BEGUN  BY 

These  are  but  a  few  samples  of  the  scenery  of 
Scottish  rural  life  with  which  "  The  Gentle 
Shepherd"  abounds.  Burns,  who  lived  in  the 
generation  that  followed  Ramsay,  and  always 
looks  back  to  him  as  one  of  his  chief  forerunners 
and  masters  in  the  poetic  art,  fixes  on  Ramsay's 
delineations  of  Nature  as  one  of  his  chief  charac- 
teristics. Burns  asks,  >Js  there  none  of  the  mod- 
erns who  will  rival  the  Greeks  in  pastoral  po- 
etry?— 

"  Yes !  there  is  ane ;  a  Scottish  callan  — 
There 's  ane  ;  come  forrit,  honest  Allan ! 
Thou  need  na  jouk  behint  the  hallan, 

A  chiel  sae  clever ; 
The  teeth  o'  Time  may  gnaw  Tantallan, 

But  thou  's  forever  ! 

"  Thou  paints  auld  Nature  to  the  nines, 
In  thy  sweet  Caledonian  lines ; 
Nae  gowden  stream  thro'  myrtles  twines, 

Where  Philomel, 
While  nightly  breezes  sweep  the  vines, 

Her  griefs  will  tell ! 

"  In  gowany  glens  thy  burnie  strays, 
Where  bonnie  lasses  bleach  their  claes ; 
Or  trots  by  hazelly  shaws  and  braes 

Wi'  hawthorns  gray, 
Where  blackbirds  join  the  shepherd's  lays 

At  close  o'  day." 

It  may  well  be  that  when  we  turn  to  Scottish 
poetry  the  burns  and  braes  should  sing  and  shine 
thixmgh  almost  every  song.  For  there  is  no  feat- 
ure in  which  Scottish  scenery  more  differs  from 
English  than  in  the  clear  and  living  northern 


ALLAN  RAMSAY  AND  THOMSON.         197 

burns,  compared  with  the  dead  drumlie  ditches 
called  brooks  in  the  Midland  Counties. 

THOMSON. 

The  return  to  Nature,  begun  by  Ramsay  in  his 
•*  Gentle  Shepherd,"  was  carried  on  by  another 
Scot,  though  hardly  a  Scottish  poet  —  Thomson, 
who  a  few  years  later  (1728-30)  published  his 
poem  of  "  The  Seasons."  In  this  work,  descrip- 
tive of  scenery  and  country  life  through  the  four 
seasons,  Thomson,  it  is  alleged,  was  but  working 
in  a  vein  which  was  native  to  Scottish  poets  from 
the  earliest  time.  Two  centuries  before,  Gawain 
Douglas,  in  the  prologues  to  his  translation  of  the 
jEneid,  abounds  in  description  of  rural  things. 
I  should  hardly  venture  to  say  it  myself,  in  case 
it  might  seem  national  prejudice,  but  a  writer 
who  is  not  a  Scot,  Mr.  S.  Brooke,  has  remarked 
that  there  is  "a  passionate,  close,  poetical  obser- 
vation and  description  of  natural  scenery  in  Scot- 
land, from  the  earliest  times,  such  as  we  do  not 
possess  in  English  poetry  till  the  time  of  Words- 
worth." In  choosing  his  subject,  therefore,  and 
in  the  minute  loving  way  in  which  he  dwells 
ipon  it,  Thomson  would  seem  to  have  been  work- 
ing in  the  spirit  of  his  country.  But  there  the 
Scottish  element  in  him  begins  and  ends.  Neither 
.%  the  kind  of  landscape  he  pictures,  in  the  rural 
customs  he  selects,  nor  in  the  language  or  versifi- 
cation of  his  poem,  is  there  much  savor  of  Scot- 
tish habits  or  scenery.  His  blank  verse  cannot 


198        RETURN  TO  NATURE  BEGUN  BY 

be  said  to  be  a  garment  that  fits  well  to  its  sub- 
ject. It  is  heavy,  cumbrous,  oratorical,  over- 
loaded withrepitjaets,  full  of  artificial  invocations, 
"  personified  abstractions,"  and  insipid  classical- 
ities.  It  is  a  composite  style  of  language  formed 
from  the  recollection  partly  of  Milton,  partly  of 
Virgil's  Georgics. 

Yet  in  spite  of  all  these  obstructions  which 
repel  pure  taste  and  natural  feeling,  no  one  can 
read  the  four  books  of  the  "Seasons"  through, 
without  seeing  that  Thomson,  for  all  his  false 
style,  wrote  with  his  eye  upon  Nature,  and  laid 
his  finger  on  many  a  fact  and  image  never  before 
touched  in  poetry.  In  the  first  few  lines  of 
"  Spring "  he  notes  how,  at  its  approach,  the 
plover  and  other  birds  which  have  wintered  by 
the  sea  leave  the  shores  and  set  far  inland  to 
their  summer  haunts  in  moors  and  hills.  Whilst 
the  season  is  still  hanging  uncertain  between 
winter  and  spring,  he  notes  how 

"  Scarce 

The  bittern  knows  his  time,  with  bill  ingulfed 
To  shake  the  sounding  marsh ;  or,  from  the  shore, 
The  plovers  When  to  scatter  o'er  the  heath, 
And  sing  their  wild  notes  to  the  listening  waste." 

How  true  to  nature  this  picture !  how  happily 
rendered !  Then  you  have  the  plowman  and  his 
oxen  beginning  their  work  — 

"  Cheered  by  the  simple  song  and  soaring  lark." 

Again,  — 

"  From  the  moist  meadow  to  the  withered  hill, 
Led  by  the  breeze,  the  -vivid  verdure  runs." 


ALLAN  RAMSAY  AND  THOMSON.         199 

That  "  withered  hill ! "  Who  that  has  ever  looked 
on  the  mountains  in  March,  just  before  the  first 
finger  of  Spring  has  touched  them,  but  will  recog- 
nize the  appropriateness  of  that  epithet  for  their 
wan,  bleached,  decayed  aspect ! 

Then  you  have  the  whole  process  of  trout- 
fishing,  in  the  "mossy-tinctured  stream,"  where 
"  the  dark  brown  water  aids  the  grilse,"  showing 
that,  as  Thomson  wrote,  his  thoughts  reverted 
from  Richmond  to  the  streams  of  the  Merse ; 
you  have  also  the  song-birds  piping  each  from 
its  proper  haunt,  the  linnet  from  "  the  flowering 
furze,"-: — the  various  places  where  each  bird  builds 
his  nest,  given  with  an  accuracy  that  every  bird- 
nesting  boy  will  recognize  ;  and  the  scent  of  the 
bean-fields,  noticed  for  the  first  time,  as  far  as  I 
know,  in  poetry. 

As  one  longer  example  of  Thomson's  close  ob- 
servation and  peculiar  manner,  take  the  descrip- 
tion of  a  spring  shower :  — 

"At  last 

The  clouds  consign  their  treasures  to  the  fields, 
And,  softly  shaking  on  the  dimpled  pool 
Prelusive  drops,  let  all  their  moisture  flow 
In  large  effusion  o'er  the  freshened  world  ; 
The  stealing  shower  is  scarce  to  patter  heard 
By  such  as  wander  through  the  forest  walks, 
Beneath  the  umbrageous  multitude  of  leaves. 

w  Thus  all  day  long  the  full-distended  clouds 
Indulge  their  genial  stores,  and  well-showered  earth 
Is  deep  enriched  with  vegetable  life ; 
Till  in  the  western  sky  the  downward  sun 
Looks  out,  effulgent,  from  amid  the  flush 


200        RETURN  TO  NATURE  BEGUN  BY 

Of  broken  clouds,  gay  shifting  to  his  beam, 

The  rapid  radiance  instantaneous  strikes 

The  illumined  mountain;  through  the  forest  streams; 

Shakes  on-  the  floods,  and  in  a  yellow  mist, 

Far  smoking  o'er  the  interminable  plain, 

In  twinkling  myriads  lights  the  dewy  gems. 

Moist,  bright,  and  green,  the  landscape  laughs  around. 

Full  swell  the  woods,  their  every  music  wakes, 

Mixed  in  wild  concert,  with  the  warbling  brooks 

Increased,  the  distant  bleatings  of  the  hills, 

And  hollow  lows  responsive  from  the  vales, 

Whence,  blending  all,  the  sweetened  zephyr  springs." 

These  are  but  a  few  samples  from  "  Spring " 
showing  the  minute  faithfulness  with  which 
Thomson  had  observed 

"  The  negligence  of  Nature,  wide  and  wild." 

Here  are  appearances  of  Nature,  each  accurately 
observed,  and  their  succession  truthfully  rendered, 
but  the  whole  is  so  overlaid  with  tawdry  diction 
that  it  is  hard  to  pierce  below  the  enamel  and  feel 
the  true  pulse  of  Nature  beating  under  it.  And 
yet  it  does  beat  there,  and  in  many  another  de- 
scription in  the  "  Seasons  "  now  little  heeded,  be- 
cause of  their  old-fashioned  garb.  And  yet  he 
who  will  read  the  "  Seasons "  through  will  find 
many  a  phrase  true  to  Nature,  many  a  felicitous 
expression  cropping  out  from  the  even  roll  of  his 
solemn  pompous  monotone.  Thomson  has  been 
called  the  Claude  of  poets.  And  his  way  of 
handling  Nature  stands  to  that  of  Wordsworth  or 
Tennyson  much  as  Claude's  landscapes  do  to 
those  }f  Turner  or  some  of  the  other  modern 
painters.  It  may  be  added  that  Thomson's  some- 


ALLAN  RAMSAY  AND  THOMPSON.       201 

what  vapid  digressions  about  Amelia  and  Lavinia 
have  not  more  meaning  than  the  conventional  lay 
figures  and  the  classic  temples  which  Claude  in- 
troduces into  the  foreground  of  his  landscapes. 

As  to  the  sentiment  which  animates  the  "  Sea- 
sons," it  is  a  revolt  from  the  life  of  town  and 
court  to  the  simplicity  and  truth  of  rural  life 
and  feeling.  It  is  almost  the  first  time  this 
revolt  finds  expression  in  English  poetry,  if  we 
except  some  of  the  sylvan  scenes  in  Shakespeare. 
As  the  French  critic  well  says,  "  Thirty  years  be- 
fore Rousseau,  Thomson  had  expressed  all  Rous- 
seau's sentiments,  almost  in  the  same  style.  Like 
him,  he  painted  the  country  with  sympathy  and 
enthusiasm.  Like  him  he  contrasted  the  golden 
age  of  primitive  simplicity  with  modern  miseries 
and  corruption.  Like  him  he  exalted  deep  love, 
conjugal  tenderness,  the  union  of  souls,  paternal 
affection,  and  all  domestic  joys.  Like  him,  he 
combated  contemporary  frivolity  and  compared 
the  ancient  republics  with  modern  states.  Like 
Rousseau,  he  praised  gravity,  patriotism,  liberty, 
virtue  ;  rose  from  the  spectacle  of  Nature  to  the 

contemplation   of   God Like  him,  too, 

he  marred  the  sincerity  of  his  emotion  and  the 
truth  of  his  poetry  by  sentimental  vapidities,  by 
pastoral  billing  and  cooing,  and  by  an  abun- 
dance of  epithets,  personified  abstractions,  pomp- 
ous invocations,  and  oratorical  tirades."  This 
passage  gives  truly,  if  with  some  exaggeration, 
the  spirit  with  which  the  "Seasons"  and  all 


202        RETURN  TO  NATURE  BEGUN  £Y 

their  outward  imagery  are  informed.  But  while 
Thomson  watched  the  ever-changing  appearances 
and  recorded  them,  what,  it  may  be  asked,  was 
his  thought  about  the  Power  which  originates 
and  upholds  them  ?  what  did  he  conceive  to  be 
the  relation  of  the  things  we  see  to  the  things  we 
do  not  see?  Everywhere  his  poem  breathes  a 
spirit  of  naturalistic  piety.  But  if  there  is  noth- 
ing in  the  "  Seasons  "  inconsistent  with  Christian 
truth,  there  is  little  or  nothing  that  directly  af- 
firms it.  In  "  Winter  "  he  breathes  this  prayer  — 

"  Father  of  light  and  life  !  thou  Good  Supreme  ! 
Oh  teach  me  what  is  good !  teach  me  thyself ! 
Save  me  from  folly,  vanity,  and  vice, 
From  eveiy  low  pursuit !  and  feed  my  soul 
With  knowledge,  conscious  peace,  and  virtue  pure, 
Sacred,  substantial,  never-fading  bliss  !  " 

There  is  nothing  in  his  amiable  and  placid  life  to 
throw  doubt  on  the  sincerity  of  that  prayer.  And 
yet  Thomson's  piety  seems  to  us  now  of  that  kind 
which  is  easily  satisfied  and  thoughtlessly  thank- 
ful! 

There  are  many  at  the  present  day,  and  those 
the  most  thoughtful,  who  "  not  only  see  through 
but  (as  has  been  said)  feel  a  strong  revulsion 
against  the  well-meant  but  superficial  attempt  to 
describe  the  world  as  happy,  and  to  see  in  God,  as 
the  Governor  of  it,  only  a  sort  of  easy  and  shal- 
low goodness."  They  cannot  be  satisfied  with  such 
a  view.  "  They  have  a  complaining  within  — 
a  sense  of  imperfection  in  and  around  them  which 
rebels  against  so  easy-going  a  view  and  demands 


ALLAN  RAMSAY  AND  THOMSON.        203 

another  solution.  It  is  not  merely  a  benevolent 
God  that  they  long  for,  but  a  God  who  sympa- 
thizes with  man,  and  who  in  some  way,  of  which 
only  revelation  can  fully  inform  us,  makes  out  of 
man's  misery  and  imperfection  the  way  to  some- 
thing better  for  him." 

Thomson's  religion,  no  doubt,  could  hardly 
have  escaped  the  infection  of  the  Deism  that 
was  all  around  him  in  the  literary  and  philo- 
sophic atmosphere  of  his  time.  In  his  beautiful 
"  Hymn,"  which  may  be  regarded  as  the  climax 
of  the  "  Seasons,"  and  as  summing  up  the  de- 
voutest  thoughts  which  these  suggested  to  him, 
there  is  nothing  that  goes  beyond  such  a  view :  — 

"  These,  as  they  change,  Almighty  Father,  these 
Are  but  the  varied  God.    The  rolling  year 
Is  full  of  thee"  — 

unless  perhaps  in  that  more  Christian  strain 
where,  hearing  the  bleating  on  the  hills  and  the 
lowings  in  the  vale,  he  breaks  forth  — 

"  For  the  Great  Shepherd  reigns, 
And  his  unsuffering  Kingdom  yet  will  come." 

The  prevailing  spirit  of  the  Hymn,  as  of  most 
of  his  other  addresses   to  the  Deity,  is  that  of 
optimism  and  the  reign   of    universal   benevo- 
ence : — 

"  I  cannot  go 

Where  Universal  Love  smiles  not  around, 
Sustaining  all  yon  orhs,  and  all  their  suns, 
From  seeming  evil  still  educing  good." 

There  is  much  benevolence  in  his  poetry,  much 
feeling  for  the  miseries  and  wrongs  of  mankind, 


204        ALLAN  RAMSAY  AND  THOMSON. 

but  no  perception  of  that  deeper  mystery  —  that 
the  whole  creation  groaneth  and  travaileth  in 
pain,  waiting  for  a  deliverance.  Neither  is  there 
any  sense  of  the  relation  of  the  creation  to  the 
Creator  other  than  that  which  the  somewhat  me- 
chanical conception  of  a  maker  and  a  machine 
supply.  Perhaps  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that 
Thomson  does  not  seem  to  feel  the  inadequacy  of 
this  conception,  for  we  in  our  own  day,  who  have 
got  to  feel  so  profoundly  its  inadequacy,  have  not 
as  yet  gone  far  to  supply  its  place  with  a  worthier. 
Yet  whatever  may  be  his  shortcomings,  all  honor 
to  the  poet  of  the  "  Seasons  "  !  Genuine  lover  of 
the  country  as  he  was,  he  was  the  first  English 
poet  who  led  poetry  back  into  the  fields,  and 
made  her  once  more  free  of  her  own  native  re* 
gion. 


CHAPTER  XHL 

NATUEB    IN    COLLINS,    GBAY,    GOLDSMITH,    AND 
BURNS. 

COLLINS. 

WHEN  Thomson  was  laid  in  Richmond  Church, 
another  poet  chanted  over  him  a  dirge  breathing 
the  very  pathos  of  Nature  herself :  — 

"  In  yonder  grave  a  Druid  lies, 

Where  slowly  winds  the  stealing  ware, 
The  year's  best  sweets  shall  duteous  rise 
To  deck  its  poet's  sylvan  grave. 

"  Remembrance  oft  shall  haunt  the  shore, 

When  Thames  in  summer  wreaths  is  drest, 
And  oft  suspend  the  dashing  oar 
To  bid  his  gentle  spirit  rest." 

About  that  ode  of  the  gentle  and  pensive 
Collins  (born  1721,  died  1759)  there  is  a  sweet 
pathetic  tone  which  the  grar  der  strains  of  later 
English  poetry  have  never  surpassed.  In  the 
"  Dirge  over  Fidele  "  the  same  strain  of  pensive 
beauty  is  renewed.  Collins  was  the  first  poet 
since  Milton  wrote  his  early  lyrics  who  brought 
to  the  description  of  rural  things  that  perfection 
of  style,  that  combined  simplicity  and  beauty, 
which  Milton  had  learned  from  the  classic  poets 


206  NATURE  IN  COLLINS,   GRAY, 

There  is  another  poem  of  Collins's  which,  if  not 
so  perfect  in  expression  as  the  two  just  named,  is 
interesting  as  almost  the  earliest  inroad  by  an 
English  poet  into  the  wild  and  romantic  world 
which  the  Highlands  of  Scotland  contain,  unless 
we  except  Shakespeare's  "Macbeth."  This  is 
Collins's  ode  on  the  u  Popular  Superstitions  of 
tte  Highlands  of  Scotland."  It  seems  that  in 
the  autumn  of  1749,  Home,  the  author  of  the 
tragedy  of  "  Douglas,"  had,  when  on  a  visit  to 
London,  during  his  brief  stay  made  the  acquaint- 
ance of  Collins,  and  kindled  his  imagination  with 
tales  of  the  Highlands  and  the  Hebrides.  Col- 
lins seems  to  have  deepened  this  interest  by  the. 
perusal  of  Martin's  curious  book  on  the  Western 
Isles,  and  on  Home's  return  to  Scotland  Collins 
addressed  to  him  the  ode,  in  which  the  English 
poet  entered  with  a  deeper,  more  imaginative  in- 
sight into  the  weird  and  wild  superstitions  of  the 
Gael  than  any  Scottish  poet  had  as  yet  shown. 
After  describing  with  great  force  and  truthful- 
ness the  second  sight,  the  wraith,  the  water-kelpie, 
and  many  such-like  things,  he  closes  with  this 
apostrophe :  — 

"  All  hail !  ye  scenes  that  o'er  my  soul  prevail ! 
Ye  splendid  friths  and  lakes,  which,  far  away, 
Are  by  smooth  Annan  filled,  or  pastoral  Tay, 
Or  Don's  romantic  springs,  at  distance  hail ! 
The  time  shall  come,  when  I,  perhaps,  may  tread 
Your  lowly  glens,  o'erhung  with  spreading  broom; 
Or,  o'er  your  stretching  heaths,  by  fancy  led  ; 
Or,  o'er  your  mountains  creep,  in  awful  gloom." 


GOLDSMITH,  AND  BURNS.  207 

Poor  Collins  ;  this  hope  was  never  fulfilled.  A 
deeper  gloom  than  any  that  rests  on  the  High- 
land mountains  too  soon  gathered  over  him.  The 
cde  itself  does  not  seem  to  have  received  the  no- 
tice it  deserves,  both  for  its  own  excellence  and 
as  the  first  symptom  of  a  new  and  enlarged  feel- 
ing about  Nature  entering  into  English  poetry. 
In  the  above  extract  the  word  "  glen  "  occurs.  Is 
there  any  earlier  instance  of  its  use  in  English 
poetry  or  prose  ?  The  Scottish  poets,  except  the 
ballad-writers,  were  afraid  to  use  it  till  the  time 
of  Scott.  Macpherson  in  his  translations  of  Os- 
sian,  twelve  years  later  than  this  ode,  uniformly 
renders  the  Gaelic  "gleann"  by  the  insipid 
"  vale." 

But  the  most  perfect  and  original  poem  of 
Collins,  as  well  as  the  most  finely  appreciative  of 
Nature,  is  his  Ode  to  Evening.  No  doubt  even- 
ing is  personified  in  his  address  as  "maid  com- 
*  posed,"  and  "calm  votaress,"  but  the  personifica- 
tion is  so  delicately  handled,  and  in  so  subdued  a 
tone,  that  it  does  not  jar  on  the  feelings,  as  such 
personifications  too  often  do  :  — 

"  If  aught  of  oaten  stop,  or  pastoral  song, 
May  hope,  chaste  Eve,  to  soothe  thy  modest  ear, 
Like  thy  own  solemn  springs, 
Thy  springs  and  dying  gales, 

"  O  nymph  reserved,  while  now  the  bright-haired  mm 
Sits  in  yon  western  tent,  whose  cloudy  skirts, 
With  brede  ethereal  wove, 
O'erhang  his  wavy  bed : 


208  NATURE  IN  COLLINS,   GRAY, 

"  Now  air  is  hushed,  save  where  the  weak-eyed  bat 
With  short,  shrill  shriek,  flits  by  on  leathern  wing  ; 
Or  where  the  beetle  winds 
His  small  but  sullen  horn, 

••  As  oft  he  rises  'midst  the  twilight  path, 
Against  the  pilgrim  borne  in  needless  hum  • 
Now  teach  me,  maid  composed, 
To  breathe  some  softened  strain. 


"  Then  lead,  calm  votaress,  where  some  sheety  lake 
Cheers  the  lone  heath,  or  some  time-hallowed  pile, 
Or  upland  fallows  gray 
Keflect  its  last  cool  gleam. 

"  But  when  chill,  blustering  winds,  or  driving  rain, 
Forbid  my  willing  feet,  be  mine  the  hut, 
That  from  the  mountain's  side, 
Views  wilds,  and  swelling  floods, 

"  And  hamlets  brown,  and  dim-discovered  spires, 
And  hears  the  simple  bell,  and  marks  o'er  all, 
Thy  dewy  finger  draw 
The  gradual  dusky  veil." 

There  is  about  the  whole  ode  a  subdued  twi- 
light tone,  a  remoteness  from  men  and  human 
things,  and  a  pensive  evening  musing,  all  the 
more  expressive,  because  it  does  not  shape  ifc- 
self  into  definite  thoughts,  but  reposes  in  appro- 
priate images.  And,  as  the  Aldine  biographer 
observes,  —  "The  absence  of  rhyme  leaves  the 
e^en  flow  of  the  verse  unbroken,  and  the  change 
at  the  end  of  each  stanza  into  shorter  lines,  as 
if  the  voice  of  the  reader  dropped  into  a  lower 
key,  contributes  to  the  effect." 

In  Thomson  there  was  probably  an  observation 


UNIVERSITY 

GOLDSMITH,  ^^/ffffe^^       209 

of  the  facts  of  Nature  wider  and  more  varied,  but 
in  Collins  there  is  an  intermingling  of  human 
feeling  with  Nature's  aspects  which  is  at  once 
more  delicate  and  deep. 

The  increased  sensibility  to  Nature  which  in 
English  poetry  appeared  in  Thomson,  was  carried 
on  through  the  eighteenth  century  to  its  close  by 
Collins,  Gray,  Goldsmith,  and  Cowper,  and  mani- 
fested itself  in  each  of  these  poets  in  a  way  char- 
acteristic of  himself. 

GRAY. 

In  Collins  we  have  seen  Nature  described  with 
a  perfect  grace  of  language  and  a  penetrating  of 
the  forms  and  colors  of  things  with  human  senti- 
ment, that  far  outwent  the  minute  and  faithful 
descriptions  of  Thomson.  This  same  movement 
was  maintained,  I  cannot  say  advanced,  by  Gray. 
That  he  had  a  fine  feeling  for  Nature  is  apparent 
in  his  letters,  which  show  more  minute  observa- 
tion and  greater  descriptive  power  than  his  po- 
etry. In  these  the  beautiful  scenery  around  the 
Westmoreland  Lakes  finds  the  earliest  notice. 

In  dealing  with  scenery,  as  with  other  things, 
Nature  without  Art,  and  Art  without  Nature,  are 
alike  inadequate.  To  hit  the  balance  is  no  easy 
task.  To  let  in  Nature  fully  upon  the  heart,  by 
means  of  an  art  which  is  colorless  and  unper- 
ceived  —  this  English  poetry  was  struggling  to- 
ward, and  Gray  helped  it  forward,  though  he  him- 
self only  attained  partial  success.  Often  the  art 
14 


210  NATURE  IN  COLLINS,   GRAY, 

is  too  apparent;  a  false  classicism  is  sometimes 
thrust  in  between  the  reader  and  the  fresh  outer 
world.  Wordsworth  has  laid  hold  of  a  sonnet  of 
Gray's  as  a  text  to  preach  against  false  poetic 
diction.  And  yet  Gray,  notwithstanding  his  often 
too  elaborate  diction,  deserves  better  of  lovers  of 
English  poetry  than  to  have  his  single  sonnet 
thus  gibbeted,  merely  because,  instead  of  saying 
the  sun  rises,  it  makes 

"Reddening  Phoebus  lift  his  golden  fire." 

In  the  ode  on  Spring,  it  is  "  the  rosy-bosomed 
hours,  fair  Venus'  train,"  which  bring  spring  in. 
Venus  is  thrust  between  you  and  the  advent  of 
spring,  much  as  Adversity  is  made  "  the  daughter 
of  Jove."  For  the  nightingale  we  have  "the 
Attic  warbler,"  as  in  another  ode,  for  the  yellow 
corn-fields  we  have  "  Ceres'  golden  reign."  It  is 
needless  to  say  how  abhorrent  this  sort  of  stuff  is 
to  the  modern  feeling  about  Nature.  And  yet, 
notwithstanding  these  blemishes,  Gray  did  help 
forward  the  movement  to  a  more  perfect  and  ade- 
quate style,  in  which  Nature  should  come  direct 
to  the  heart,  through  a  perfectly  transparent  me- 
dium of  art.  When  he  is  at  his  best,  as  in  the 
Elegy,  Nature  and  human  feeling  so  perfectly 
combine  that  the  mind  finds  in  all  the  images 
satisfaction  and  relief.  There  is  in  the  Elegy  no 
image  from  Greece  or  Rome,  no  intrusive  heathen 
deity,  to  jar  upon  the  feeling.  From  the  com- 
mon English  landscape  alone  is  drawn  all  that  ia 
needed  to  minister  to  the  quiet  but  deep  pathoa 
of  the  whole. 


GOLDSMITH,  AND  BURNS.  211 

The  line  of  poets  who  carried  on  the  descrip- 
tion of  Nature  during  the  last  century,  Collins, 
Gray,  Goldsmith,  and  Cowper,  much  as  they  dif- 
fer, have  this  in  common.  Their  style,  though 
each  had  his  own,  was  in  all  formed  by  a  more  or 
less  intimate  study  of  the  classic  poets.  And  they 
regarded  Nature,  all  more  or  less,  in  a  meditative 
f  moralizing  way.  They  were  all  thoughtful,  culti- 
vated men,  with  convictions  and  sentiments  of 
their  own  —  sentiments  mainly  of  a  grave  cast,  — 
they  saw  Nature  through  the  light  of  these  senti- 
ments, and  sought  out  those  scenes  and  images  in 
Nature  which  suited  their  habitual  mood.  None 
of  them  are  born  children  of  Nature,  knowing 
her  face  before  they  could  read  or  write.  They 
were  lovers  of  books  before  they  became  lovers 
of  the  country.  Hence  there  is  in  them  no  rapt- 
ure in  the  presence  of  Nature.  For  that  we 
shall  have  to  look  elsewhere  than  to  those  schol- 
arly gentlemen. 

GOLDSMITH. 

The  amiable  and  versatile  Goldsmith  looks  at 
Nature,  as  he  passes  along,  with  a  less  moralizing 
eye  than  the  sombre-minded  Gray.  In  his  earliest 
long  poem,  "  The  Traveller,"  published  in  1765, 
though  he  surveys  many  lands,  his  eye  dwells  on 
man  and  society  rather  than  on  the  outward 
world.  In  remarkable  contrast  to  more  recent 
English  poets,  though  he  passes  beneath  the 
shadow  of  the  Alps,  he  looks  up  to  them  with 


212  NATURE  IN  COLLINS,   GRAY, 

shuddering  horror  rather  than  with  any  kindling 
of  soul.  The  mountain  glory  had  not  yet  burst 
on  the  souls  of  men.  The  one  thought  that 
strikes  him  is  the  hard  lot  of  the  mountaineers. 
Such  conventional  lines  as  these  are  all  that  he 
has  for  the  mountains  themselves  :  — 

"  No  vernal  blooms  their  torpid  rocks  array, 
But  winter  lingers  in  the  lap  of  May ; 
No  zephyr  fondly  sues  the  mountain's  breast, 
But  meteors  glare,  and  stormy  glooms  invest." 

It  is  only  when  he  thinks  of  the  Switzer's  love 
for  them  that  they  become  interesting :  — 

"  Dear  is  the  shed  to  which  his  soul  conforms, 
And  dear  that  hill  which  lifts  him  to  the  storms ; 
And  as  a  child,  when  scaring  sounds  molest, 
Clings  close  and  closer  to  his  mother's  breast, 
So  the  loud  torrent,  and  the  whirlwind's  roar, 
But  bind  him  to  his  native  mountains  more." 

This  poem,  however,  is  remarkable  as  the  first 
expression  in  English  verse  of  that  personal  in- 
terest in  foreign  scenes  and  people  which  has 
kindled  so  many  a  splendid  strain  of  our  more 
recent  poetry.  But  it  is  in  "  The  Deserted  Vil- 
lage," his  best  known  poem,  that  he  has  most 
fully  shown  the  grace  and  truthfulness  with 
which  he  could  touch  natural  scenes.  Lissoy,  an 
Irish  village  where  the  poet's  brother  had  a  liv- 
ing, is  said  to  have  been  the  original  from  which 
he  drew.  In  the  poem,  the  church  which  crowns 
the  neighboring  hill,  the  mill,  the  brook,  the 
hawthorn-tree,  are  all  taken  straight  from  the 
outer  world.  The  features  of  Nature  and  the 


GOLDSMITH,  AND  BURNS.  213 

works  of  man,  the  parsonage,  the  school-house, 
the  ale-house,  all  harmonize  in  one  picture,  and 
though  the  feeling  of  desolation  must  needs  be 
a  melancholy  one,  yet  it  is  wonderfully  varied 
and  relieved  by  the  uncolored  faithfulness  of  the 
pictures  from  Nature  and  the  kindly  humor  of 
those  of  man.  It  is  needless  to  quote  from  a 
poem  which  every  one  knows  so  well.  The  verse 
of  Pope  is  not  the  best  vehicle  for  rural  descrip- 
tion, but  it  never  was  employed  with  greater 
grace  and  transparency  than  in  "  The  Deserted 
Village."  In  that  poem  there  is  fine  feeling  for 
Nature,  in  her  homely  forms,  and  truthful  de- 
scription of  these,  but  beyond  this  Goldsmith 
does  not  venture.  The  pathos  of  the  outward 
world  in  its  connection  with  man  is  there,  but  no 
reference  to  the  meaning  of  Nature  in  itself, 
much  less  any  question  of  its  relation  to  the 
Divine  Being  and  a  supersensible  world. 

COWPER. 

Though  Collins,  Gray,  and  Goldsmith,  each  in 
his  own  way,  turned  their  eye  on  rural  scenery, 
and  took  beautiful  pictures  and  images  from  it 
into  their  poetry,  yet  it  was  none  of  these,  but  a 
later  poet,  Cowper,  who,  as  the  true  successor  of 
Thomson,  carried  on  the  descriptive  work  which 
he  began.  It  was  in  1730  that  the  first  complete 
edition  of  the  "  Seasons  "  appeared.  "  The  Task >f 
was  published  in  1785.  This  is  the  poem  in 
which  Cowper  most  fully  put  forth  his  power  as 


214  NATURE  IN  COLLINS,   GRAY, 

a  rural  poet.  In  the  first  book,  "  The  Sofa,''  ne 
thus  quaintly  makes  the  first  plunge  from  indoor 
to  outdoor  life,  to  which  many  a  time  ere  the  long 
poem  is  ended  he  returns :  — 

"  The  Sofa  suits 

The  gouty  limb,  'tis  true  ;  but  gouty  limb, 
Though  on  a  sofa,  may  I  never  feel  : 
For  I  have  loved  the  rural  walk  through  lanes 
Of  grassy  swarth,  close  cropped  by  nibbling  sheep, 
And  skirted  thick  with  intertexture  firm 
Of  thorny  boughs ;  have  loved  the  rural  walk 
O'er  hills,  through  valleys,  and  by  river's  brink, 
E'er  since,  a  truant  boy,  I  passed  my  bounds, 
To  enjoy  a  ramble  on  the  banks  of  Thames ; 
And  still  remember,  nor  without  regret, 
Of  hours  that  sorrow  since  has  much  endeared, 
How  oft,  my  slice  of  pocket-store  consumed, 
Still  hungering,  penniless,  and  far  from  home, 
I  fed  on  scarlet  hips  and  stony  haws, 
Or  blushing  crabs,  and  berries  that  emboss 
The  bramble,  black  as  jet,  or  sloes  austere." 

This,  the  first  rural  passage  in  the  "  Task," 
strikes  the  note  of  difference  between  Cowper's 
way  of  describing  Nature  and  Thomson's ;  Cow- 
per  unhesitatingly  introduces  the  personal  ele- 
ment, describes  actual  and  individual  scenes  as  he 
himself  saw  them  in  his  morning  or  evening 
walk.  Or  when  rural  scenes  are  not  thus  person- 
ally introduced,  they  everywhere  come  in  as  in- 
terludes in  the  midst  of  the  poet's  keen  interest 
in  human  affairs,  his  quiet  and  delicate  humor, 
his  tender  sympathy  with  the  poor  and  the  suf- 
fering, his  indignation  against  human  wrong,  his 
earnest  brooding  over  human  destiny,  and  his 


GOLDSMITH,  AND  BURNS.  215 

forward  glances  to  a  time  when  visible  things 
will  give  place  to  a  higher  and  brighter  order. 
Thomson,  on  the  other  hand,  describes  Nature  as 
seen  by  itself,  separate  and  apart  from  human 
passion,  or  relieved  only  by  some  vapid  episodes 
of  a  false  Arcadianism.  Hence,  great  as  is 
Thomson's  merit  for  having,  first  of  his  age, 
gone  back  to  Nature,  the  interest  he  awakes  in  it 
is  feeble,  because  with  him  Nature  is  so  divorced 
from  individuality  and  from  man.  It  is  Nature 
in  the  general  rather  than  the  individual  scene 
which  he  describes  —  Nature  aloof  from  rather 
than  combined  with  man.  But  her  full  depth 
and  tenderness  she  never  reveals  except  to  the 
heart  that  throbs  with  human  interest. 

But  though  Cowper  sees  the  outer  world  as 
set  off  against  his  own  personal  moods  and  the 
interests  of  man,  yet  he  does  not  allow  these  to 
discolor  his  scenes  or  to  blur  the  exactness  of 
their  outlines.  Fidelity,  absolute  veracity,  char- 
acterize his  descriptions.  He  himself  says  that 
he  took  nothing  at  second-hand,  and  all  his  pict- 
ures bear  witness  to  this.  Homely,  of  course, 
flat,  tame,  was  the  country  he  dwelt  in  and  de- 
scribed. But  to  this  day  that  Huntingdonshire 
landscape,  and  the  flats  by  the  sluggish  Ouse,  in 
themselves  so  unbeautiful,  acquire  a  charm  to  the 
eye  of  the  traveler  from  the  remembered  poetry 
of  the  "  Task  *'  and  for  the  sake  of  him  who 
wrote  it.  By  that  poetry  it  may  be  said  that 
he 


216  NATURE  IN  COLLINS,   GRAY, 

"  For  scenes  not  beautiful  did  more 
Than  beauty  for  the  fairest  scenes  can  do." 

As  one  outr  of  many  landscapes  described,  take 
this:  — 

"  How  oft  upon  yon  eminence  our  pace 
Has  slackened  to  a  pause,  and  we  have  borne 
The  ruffling  wind,  scarce  conscious  that  it  blew, 
While  admiration,  feeding  at  the  eye, 
And  still  unsated,  dwelt  upon  the  scene. 
Thence  with  what  pleasure  have  we  just  discerned, 
The  distant  plow  slow-moving,  and  beside 
His  laboring  team,  that  swerved  not  from  the  track, 
The  sturdy  swain  diminished  to  a  boy  ! 
Here  Ouse,  slow-winding  through  a  level  plain 
Of  spacious  meads  with  cattle  sprinkled  o'er, 
Conducts  the  eye  along  his  sinuous  course 
Delighted.     There,  fast  rooted  in  their  bank, 
Stand,  never  overlooked,  our  favorite  elms, 
That  screen  the  herdsman's  solitary  hut ; 
While  far  beyond,  and  overthwart  the  stream, 
That,  as  with  molten  glass,  inlays  the  vale, 
The  sloping  land  recedes  into  the  clouds ; 
Displaying,  on  its  varied  side,  the  grace 
Of  hedge-row  beauties  numberless,  square  tower, 
Tall  spire,  from  which  the  sound  of  cheerful  bells 
Just  undulates  upon  the  listening  ear, 
Groves,  heaths,  and  smoking  villages,  remote. 
Scenes  must  be  beautiful  which,  daily  viewed, 
Please  daily,  and  whose  novelty  survives 
Long  knowledge  and  the  scrutiny  of  years. 
Praise  justly  due  to  those  that  I  describe." 

An  ordinary  prospect,  you  say,  described  in 
very  ordinary  poetry.  Yes,  but  the  scene  is  a 
real  scene,  one  of  England's  veritable  landscapes, 
and  the  lines  which  describe  it  are  genuine 
pcetry,  —  exact,  transparent,  lingering  lovingly 


GOLDSMITH,  AND  BURNS.  217 

over  the  scene  which  the  eye  rests  on.  And  for 
its  being  ordinary  description,  no  doubt  it  flows 
easily  and  naturally  along,  but  let  any  one  try  to 
describe  as  common  a  prospect  in  verse,  and  he 
will  find  that  this  is  not  ordinary  verse,  but  in- 
stinct with  that  unobtrusive  grace  which  only 
true  poets  attain. 

Then  how  frequently  the  commonest  country 
Bights  awaken  Cowper's  touch  of  native  humor. 
Here  is  what  he  says  of  the  mole  and  his  work : 
we  — 

"  Feel  at  every  step 

Our  foot  half  sunk  in  hillocks  green  and  soft, 
Raised  by  the  mole,  the  miner  of  the  soil. 
He,  not  unlike  the  great  ones  of  mankind, 
Disfigures  earth,  and,  plotting  in  the  dark, 
Toils  much  to  earn  a  monumental  pile 
That  may  record  the  mischiefs  he  has  done." 

In  Keble's  "  Essay  on  Sacred  Poetry  "  I  lately 
read  the  following  comparison  between  Cowper 
and  Burns  as  descriptive  poets.  "  Compare,"  he 
says,  "the  landscapes  of  Cowper  with  those  of 
Burns.  There  is,  if  we  mistake  not,  the  same 
sort  of  difference  between  them,  as  in  the  con- 
versation of  two  persons  on  scenery,  the  one  orig- 
inally an  enthusiast  in  his  love  of  the  works  of 
Nature,  the  other,  driven  by  disappointment  or 
weariness  to  solace  himself  with  them  as  he 

might The  one  all-overflowing  with  the 

love  of  Nature,  and  indicating  at  every  turn,  that 
whatever  his  lot  in  life,  he  could  not  have  been 
iappy  without  her ;  the  other  visibly  and  wisely 


218  NATURE  IN  COLLINS,   GRAY, 

soothing  himself,  but  not  without  effort,  by  at- 
tending to  rural  objects  in  default  of  some  more 
congenial  happiness,  of  which  he  had  almost  come 
to  despair.  The  latter,  in  consequence,  labori- 
ously sketching  every  object  that  came  in  his 
way ;  the  other,  in  one  or  two  rapid  lines  whicli 
operate,  as  it  were,  like  a  magician's  spell,  pre- 
senting to  the  fancy  just  that  picture  which  was 
wanted  to  put  the  reader's  mind  in  unison  with 
the  writer's."  And  then  Keble  quotes,  in  illus- 
tration of  the  difference,  the  description  of  Even- 
ing in  the  fourth  book  of  the  "  Task,"  set  over 
against  the  truly  pastoral  chant  of  "  Dainty 
Davie."  I  cannot  regard  this  estimate  of  the 
two  poets  as  altogether  true.  The  passage  which 
Keble  quotes  from  Cowper  is  not  one  of  his  hap- 
piest. "Evening"  is  there  personified  in  con- 
ventional fashion,  as  "with  matron-step  slow 
moving,"  with  night  treading  "  on  her  sweeping 
train."  If  the  two  poets  are  to  be  compared  at 
all,  let  it  be  when  both  are  at  their  best.  Again, 
is  it  quite  fair  to  contrast  poetry  of  description 
with  the  poetry  of  lyric  passion,  and  to  reject  the 
former  because  it  does  not  possess  the  vivid  glow 
that  belongs  to  the  latter  ?  Moreover,  the  coun- 
try which  Cowper  had  before  him  suited  better  a 
sober  and  meditative  than  an  impassioned  strain. 
Tli  ere  can  be  no  doubt  that  Cowper  turned  to 
Nature  as  a  relief  and  solace  from  too  sad 
thoughts  rather  than  with  the  rapture  of  a  frosh 
heart  and  a  youthfu\  love.  But  Keble  surely 


GOLDSMITH,  AND  BURNS.  219 

would  have  been  the  last  to  deny  that  this  is  a 
legitimate  use  to  make  of  Nature.  He,  before 
most  men,  would  have  felt  that  that  is  one  of  the 
finest  ministries  of  Nature  which  Cowper  thus 
expresses :  — 

*'  Our  groves  were  planted  to  console  at  noon 
The  pensive  wanderer  in  their  shades,  at  eve 
The  moonbeam,  sliding  softly  in  between 
The  sleeping  leaves  is  all  the  light  they  wish, 
Birds  warbling  all  the  music." 

If  it  be  one  of  Nature's  offices  to  make  the 
young  and  the  happy  happier,  it  is  her  no  less 
genuine  and  beneficent  work  to  lighten,  by  her 
glad  or  reposeful  looks,  aged  hearts  that  may  be 
world-weary  or  desponding. 

How  exact,  faithful,  and  literally  true  in  his 
record  of  the  appearances  of  Nature  Cowper  is, 
we  have  seen.  It  remains  to  ask  whether  he  had 
any  philosophy  of  Nature,  and  if  so,  what  it 
was.  It  could  not  be  that  one  so  devout  could 
look  habitually  on  the  face  of  Nature  without 
asking  himself  how  all  this  visible  vastness  stands 
related  to  the  Invisible  One  whom  his  heart  held 
commune  with.  All  remember  his  well-known 
line,  -  - 

"  God  made  the  country,  but  man  made  the  town," 

and  this  thought  echoes  through  all  his  praises  of 
the  country,  and  enhances  his  pleasure  in  it. 
But  it  is  not  only  by  incidental  allusion  that 
Cowper  lets  us  know  his  thoughts  on  these 


220  NATURE  IN  COLLINS,   GRAY, 

things.  The  "Task"  contains  two  long  pas- 
sages, one  in  the  "  Winter  Morning  Walk,"  from 
line  733  to  906,  and  another  in  "  The  Winter 
Walk  at  Noon,"  from  line  181  to  254,  in  which 
his  feelings  on  this  subject  find  full  utterance, 
opening  with  the  noble  words,  — 

"  He  is  the  freeman  whom  the  Truth  makes  free, 
And  all  are  slaves  beside/' 

IL  the  former  passage,  of  the  man  whose  heart  is 
set  free  with  this  heavenly  freedom  he  says,  in 
words  well  known, 

"  He  looks  abroad  into  the  varied  field 
Of  Nature,  and    .... 
Calls  the  delightful  scenery  all  his  own. 
His  are  the  mountains,  and  the  valleys  his, 
And  the  resplendent  rivers.     His  to  enjoy 
With  a  propriety  that  none  can  feel, 
But  who,  with  filial  confidence  inspired, 
Can  lift  to  Heaven  an  unpresumptuous  eye, 
And  smiling  say,  '  My  Father  made  them  all.' " 

And  so  throughout  this  whole  passage  he  con- 
tinues in  a  strain  akin  to  that  of  Thomson's 
Hymn,  but  more  intimate  and  devout,  his  ac- 
knowledgment of  Him  whom  he  calls  "  The  only 
just  Proprietor  "  of  Nature.  It  is  He  who  alike 

"  Gives  its  lustre  to  an  insect's  wing, 
And  wheels  his  throne  upon  the  rolling  worlds." 

When  He  has  enlightened  the  eye  and  touched 
the  mortal  ear  — 

"In  that  blest  moment,  Nature  throwing  ^de 
Her  veil  opaque,  discloses  with  a  smile 
The  Author  of  her  beauties,  who,  retired 


GOLDSMITH,  AND  BURNS.  221 

Behind  his  own  creation,  works  unseen 
By  the  impure,  and  hears  his  word  denied. 


"  But,  O  thou  bounteous  Giver  of  all  good, 
Thou  art  of  all  thy  gifts  thyself  the  crown ! 
Give  what  thou  canst,  without  thee  we  are  poor, 
And  with  thee  rich,  take  what  thou  wilt  away." 

A  finer  strain  of  rapturous  piety  could  not  be,  but 
yet  in  it  all  there  is  no  advance  beyond  the  old 
conception  of  a  dead  mechanical  world,  which 
God,  himself  removed  aloof,  moves  entirely  from 
without.  There  is  no  hint  that  Nature  is  alive 
with  a  life  received  from  God  himself,  and  mys- 
teriously connected  with  Him. 

But  in  the  second  passage  alluded  to  his  thought 
about  Nature  takes  a  higher  reach.  Speaking  of 
the  revival  of  the  earth  under  the  touch  of  spring, 
he  teaches  that 

"  There  lives  and  moves 
A  soul  in  all  things,  and  that  soul  is  God." 

Then,  alluding  to  the  view,  entertained  by  many, 
then  as  now,  that  what  we  call  Nature's  opera- 
tions are  upheld  and  carried  forward  by  fixed 
laws,  which  spare  the  Maker  all  further  trouble, 
he  asserts  that  all  things  are  impelled 

"  To  ceaseless  service  by  a  ceaseless  force, 
And  under  pressure  of  some  conscious  cause. 
The  Lord  of  all,  Himself  through  all  diffused, 
Sustains,  and  is  the  life  of  all  that  lives. 
Nature  is  but  a  name  for  an  effect 
Whose  cause  is  God." 

Nor  does  he  st)p  at  this  merely  theistic  view: 


222  NATURE  IN  COLLINS,   GRAY, 

He  goes  on  to  the  distinctly  Christian  teaching  of 
St.  John  and  St.  Paul,  so  easy  to  assert,  so  hard 
to  take  home  to  the  feelings  and  imagination, 
that  it  is  the  Eternal  and  Incarnate  Word  who  is 
the  Creator  and  Sustained  of  this  visible  universe. 

"  All  are  under  One.     One  Spirit" —  his 
Who  wore  the  platted  thorns  with  bleeding  brows  — 
Rules  universal  Nature.    Not  a  flower 
But  shows  some  touch,  in  freckle,  streak,  or  stain, 
Of  his  unrivaled  pencil." 

No  doubt  Cowper  held  and  believed  this  firmly, 
and  it  may  be  at  times  had  keen  intuition  of  its 
truth.  But  it  cannot  be  said  that  he  attained  to 
make  it  felt  in  his  ordinary  descriptions  of  the 
every-day  landscape.  He  does  not  describe  Nat- 
ure as  if  he  habitually  saw  it  as  a  living  being 
plastic  to  an  overruling  and  informing  spirit. 
Rather  he  beheld  her  more  as  common  eyes  be- 
hold her,  as  a  mechanism,  with  fixed  features  and 
a  definite  outline,  which  do  not  spontaneously, 
and  without  an  exertion  of  thought,  lend  them- 
selves as  vehicles  of  spiritual  reality.  If  he  had 
been  more  possessed  with  the  mystical  vision  he 
might  have  been  a  higher  poet  for  the  few.  He 
would  not  have  been  what  he  has  been  called,  the 
best  of  our  descriptive  poets  for  every-day  wear, 
the  familiar  companion  of  every  quiet  English 
household.  But  though  Cowper's  "  Task  "  is  full 
of  scenery,  it  is  not  purely,  or  even  mainly,  de- 
scriptive poetry.  More  than  its  rural  character 
is  its  deep,  tender,  universal  human-heartedness* 


GOLDSMITH,  AND  BURNS.  223 

Man  and  his  interests  are  paramount,  as  para- 
mount as  in  Pope  or  any  other  city  poet.  Only 
it  is  not  the  conventional,  not  the  surface  part  of 
man,  but  that  which  is  permanent  in  him  and 
universal.  In  his  indignation  against  injustice 
and  oppression,  his  hatred  of  slavery,  his  large 
sense  of  universal  brotherhood,  and  his  revolt 
against  all  that  hinders  it,  we  already  hear  in  his 
poetry  the  not  far-off  murmur  of  the  Revolution, 
and  of  the  new  era  it  was  bringing  in.  His  de- 
nunciation of  the  Bastile  but  four  years  before 
it  fell  — 

"  Ye  horrid  towers,  the  abode  of  broken  hearts, 
Ye  dungeons,  and  ye  cages  of  despair, 
There  's  not  an  English  heart  that  would  not  leap 
To  hear  that  ye  were  fallen  at  last,"  — 

is  a  fitting  prelude  to  that  prayer  of  thanksgiving 
which  Wordsworth  raised  a  few  years  afterward 
from  Morecombe  Sands  when  he  first  heard  of  the 
fall  of  Robespierre.  It  is  because  Cowper's  po- 
etry throbs  with  this  deep  and  universal  human 
sympathy  that  its  background  of  landscape,  plain 
as  it  is,  and  untransfigured  by  passion,  comes  in 
with  such  graceful  and  refreshing  relief.  Of 
Cowper's  descriptions  may  be  said  what  Words- 
worth says  of  his  own,  there  is  always 

"Some  happy  tone 
Of  meditation  slipping  in  between 
The  beauty  coming  and  the  beauty  gone." 

And  this  it  is  that  gives  them  their  peculiar 
charm. 


224  NATURE  IN  COLLINS,   GRAY, 

BURNS. 

The  rural  descriptions  and  the  reflections  on 
fche  outer  world  contained  in  the  poetry  of  Cow- 
per,  mark  the  highest  limit  which  the  feeling  for 
Nature  had  reached  in  England  at  the  close  of 
last  century.  But  the  stream  of  natural  poetry 
in  England,  which  up  to  that  time  had  been  fed 
from  purely  native  sources,  and  which  had  flowed 
on  through  all  last  century  with  ever  increasing 
volume,  received  toward  the  close  of  the  century 
affluents  from  other  regions,  which  tinged  the 
color  and  modified  the  direction  of  its  future  cur- 
rent. Of  these  affluents  the  first  and  most  power- 
ful was  the  poetry  of  Burns.  It  is  strange  to 
think  that  Cowper  and  he  were  singing  their 
songs  at  the  same  time,  each  in  his  own  way  de- 
scribing the  scenery  that  surrounded  him,  and 
yet  that  they  hardly  knew  of  each  other's  ex- 
istence. 

Burns  not  only  lived  in  a  world  of  nature,  of 
society,  and  of  feeling,  wholly  alien  to  that  of 
Cowper,  but  he  took  for  his  models  far  different 
poets.  These  models  were  the  Scottish  rhymers, 
Allan  Ramsay,  Ferguson,  and  the  unknown  sing- 
ers of  the  native  ballads,  and  especially  of  the 
popular  songs,  of  his  country.  Proud  and  self- 
reliant  as  Burns  was,  he  everywhere  speaks  of 
Ramsay  and  Ferguson  as  his  models  and  supe- 
riors. From  these  he  took  the  forms  of  his  poems, 
though  into  these  forms  he  poured  a  new  and 


GOLDSMITH,  AND  BURNS.  225 

stronger  inspiration.  Burns's  "  Halloween  "  is 
framed  on  a  model  of  Ferguson's  poem  called 
"Leith  Races,"  and  "The  Cottar's  Saturday 
Night"  is  evidently  suggested  by  Ferguson's 
"  Farmer's  Ingle ; "  but  poor  Ferguson's  very 
mundane  view  of  happiness  is,  at  least  in  the 
"  Cottar's  Saturday  Night,"  by  Burns,  transfig- 
ured by  a  purer  and  nobler  sentiment.  Besides 
these  Burns  knew  the  English  poets,  such  as  Pope 
and  Shenstone,  but  well  for  the  world  that  he  did 
not  come  too  early  under  their  influence,  else  we 
had  probably  lost  much  of  what  is  most  native 
and  original  in  him.  Somewhere  in  his  later 
years  he  marvels  at  his  own  audacity  in  having 
ventured  to  use  his  native  Scotch  as  the  vehicle 
for  poetry,  and  speaks  as  if,  had  he  earlier  known 
more  English  literature,  he  would  not  have  dared 
to  do  so.  Yet  when  he  does  essay  to  write  pure 
English  his  poetry  becomes  only  of  third  or 
fourth-rate  excellence,  just  as  nothing  can  be 
more  mawkish  and  vapid  than  Ferguson,  when 
he  makes  Damon  and  Alexis  discourse  in  his 
purely  English  pastorals.  Only  in  one  poem, 
written  in  pure  English,  does  Burns  attain  high 
excellence,  and  that  one  is  the  "Lines  to  Mary 
in  Heaven."  Perhaps  in  nothing,  except  it  may 
be  in  humorous  or  pathetic  feeling,  is  the  Scottish 
dialect  more  in  place  than  in  describing  the  na- 
tive scenery.  For,  in  truth,  the  features  of  every 
county,  if  possible  of  each  district,  ought  to  be 
rendered  in  the  very  words  by  which  they  are 

15 


226  NATURE  IN  COLLINS,   GRAY, 

known  to  the  natives.  When  instead  of  this 
they  are  transferred  into  the  literary  language, 
they  have  lost  I  know  not  how  much  of  their  life 
and  individuality.  If  in  Scottish  scenery,  for  in- 
stance, you  speak  of  a  brook  and  a  grove,  instead 
of  a  burn  or  a  shaw  or  wood,  you  have  really 
robbed  the  locality  described  of  all  that  belongs 
to  it.  The  same  thing  holds  still  more  of  mount- 
ain scenery,  in  which,  unless  you  adopt  the  words 
which  the  country  people  apply  to  their  own 
hills,  you  had  better  leave  them  undescribed. 
This  feeling  has  at  last  forced  both  poets,  and  all 
who  attempt  to  render  Highland  scenery,  to  use 
the  Celtic  words  by  which  the  mountain  linea- 
ments are  described.  We  must,  if  we  would  name 
these  features  at  all,  speak  of  the  "corrie,"  the 
"lochan,"  the  "balloch,"  and  the  "screetan"  or 
"  sclidder,"  for  the  book-English  has  no  words 
for  these  things.  Hence  it  is  that  Scottish  Low- 
land scenery  is  never  so  truly  and  vividly  de- 
scribed, as  when  Burns  uses  his  own  vernacular. 
And  yet  Burns  was  no  merely  descriptive  poet. 
It  would  be  difficult  to  name  one  of  his  poems  in 
which  description  of  Nature  is  the  main  object. 
Everywhere  with  him,  man,  his  feelings  and  his 
fa'te,  stand  out  in  the  front  of  his  pictures,  and 
Nature  comes  in  as  the  delightful  background  — 
yet  Nature  loved  with  a  love,  beheld  with  a  rapt- 
ure, all  the  more  genuine,  because  his  pulses 
throbbed  in  such  intense  sympathy  with  man. 
Every  one  can  recall  many  a  wonderful  line, 


GOLDSMITH,  AND  BURNS.  227 

sometimes  whole  verse,  in  his  love-songs,  in 
which  the  surrounding  landscape  is  flashed  on  the 
mind's  eye.  In  that  longer  poem,  so  full  of  sa- 
gacious observation  on  life  and  character,  "  The 
Twa  Dogs,"  how  graphically  rendered  is  the 
evening  with  which  the  poem  closes !  — 

"  By  this,  the  sun  was  out  o'  sight, 
An'  darker  gloamin  brought  the  night : 
The  bum-clock  hummed  wi'  lazy  drone, 
The  kye  stood  rowtin  i'  the  loan ; 
When  up  they  gat,  an*  shook  their  lugs, 
Rejoiced  they  were  na  men  but  dogs ; 
An*  each  took  aff  his  several  way, 
Resolved  to  meet  some  ither  day." 

"The  kye  stood  rowting  in  the  loan,"  what  a 
picture  is  that  of  an  old-fashioned  Lowland  farm, 
with  the  loane  or  lane,  between  two  dikes,  lead- 
ing up  to  the  out-field  or  moor !  All  who  have 
known  the  reality  will  at  once  recognize  the  truth 
of  the  picture,  in  which  -the,  kye,  as  they  come 
home  at  gloamin',  stop  and  low,  ere  they  entei 
the  byre  :  to  others  it  is  uncommunicable. 

Or  take  that  description  in   "  Halloween  "  of 
the  burn  and  the  adventure  there  :  — 

"  Whyles  owre  a  linn  the  burnie  plays, 

As  thro*  the  glen  it  wimpl't  ; 
Whyles  round  a  rocky  scaur  it  strays 

Whyles  in  atwiel  it  dimpl't ; 
Whyles  glitter'd  to  the  nightly  rays, 

Wi'  bickering,  dancing  dazzle ; 
Whyles  cookit  underneath  the  braes 
Below  the  spreading  hazel, 

Unseen  tha^;  night. 


228  NATURE  IN  COLLINS,    GRAY, 

"  Amang  the  brachens  on  the  brae, 

Between  her  an'  the  moon, 
The  Deil,  or  else  an  outler  Quey, 

Gat  up  an'  gae  a  croon : 
Poor  Leezie's  heart  maist  lap  the  hool ; 

Near  lav'rock-height  she  jumpit, 
But  mist  a  fit,  an'  in  the  pool 
Out-owre  the  lugs  she  plumpit, 

Wi'  a  plunge  that  night." 

Would  any  one  who  can  feel  the  force  of  that 
description  allow  that  it  could  be  expressed  in  lit- 
erary English  without  losing  much  of  its  charm  ? 
I  have  said  that  Burns's  glances  at  Nature  are 
almost  all  incidental,  and,  by  the  way,  and  this 
enhances  their  value.  There  is,  however,  a  pas- 
sage in  an  Epistle  to  William  Simpson,  in  which 
he  addresses  Nature  directly,  and  speaks  wit  more 
consciously  the  feeling  with  which  she  inspired 
him:  — 

"O,  sweet  are  Coila's  haughs  an'  woods, 
When  lintwhites  chant  amang  the  buds, 
And  jinkm  hares,  in  amorous  whids, 

Their  loves  enjoy, 
While  thro'  the  braes  the  cushat  croods 

Wi'  wailfV  cry ! 

"  Ev'n  winter  bleak  has  charms  to  me 
When  winds  rave  thro'  the  naked  tree ; 
Or  frosts  on  hills  of  Ochiltree 

Are  hoary  gray ; 
Or  blinding  drifts  wild-furious  flee, 

Dark'ning  the  day ! 

*  O  Nature !  a*  thy  shews  and  forms 
To  feeling,  pensive  hearts  hae  charms  I 
Whether  the  summer  kindly  warms 
Wi'  life  an'  light, 


GOLDSMITH,  AND  BURNS.  229 

Or  winter  howls,  in  gusty  storms, 

The  lang,  dark  night ! 

"  The  Muse,  nae  Poet  ever  fand  her, 
Till  by  nimsel  he  learn'd  to  wander, 
Adown  some  trottin  burn's  meander, 

An*  no  think  lang ; 
O  sweet,  to  stray  an'  pensive  ponder 

A  heart-felt  sang ! " 

Three  things  may  be  noted  as  to  the  influence 
of  Burns  on  men's  feeling  for  Nature. 

First,  he  was  a  more  entirely  open-air  poet 
than  any  first-rate  singer  who  had  yet  lived,  and 
as  such  he  dealt  with  Nature  in  a  more  free,  close, 
intimate  way  than  any  English  poet  since  the  old 
ballad-singers.  He  did  more  to  bring  the  hearts 
of  men  close  to  the  outer  world,  and  the  outer 
world  to  the  heart,  than  any  former  poet.  His 
keen  eye  looked  directly,  with  no  intervening 
medium,  on  the  face  alike  of  Nature  and  of  man, 
and  embraced  all  creation  in  one  large  sympathy. 
With  familiar  tenderness  he  dwelt  on  the  lower 
creatures,  felt  for  their  sufferings,  as  if  they  had 
been  his  own,  and  opened  men's  hearts  to  feel 
how  much  the  groans  of  creation  are  needlessly 
increased  by  the  indifference  or  cruelty  of  man. 
In  Burns,  as  in  Cowper,  and  in  him  perhaps  more 
than  in  Cowper,  there  was  a  large  going  forth  of 
tenderness  to  the  lower  creatures,  and  in  their 
poetry  this  first  found  utterance,  and  in  no  poet 
since  their  time,  so  fully  as  in  these  two. 

Secondly,  his  feeling  in  Nature's  presence  was 
not,  as  in  the  English  poets  of  his  time,  a  quiet 


230  NATURE  IN  COLLINS,   GRAY, 

contemplative  pleasure.  It  was  nothing  short  of 
rapture.  Other  more  modern  poets  may  have 
been  thrilled  with  the  same  delight,  he  alone  of 
all  in  last  century  expressed  the  thrill.  In  this, 
as  in  other  things,  he  is  the  truest  herald  of  that 
strain  of  rejoicing  in  Nature,  even  to  ecstasy, 
which  has  formed  one  of  the  finest  tones  in  the 
poetry  of  this  century. 

Thirdly,  he  does  not  philosophize  on  Nature  or 
her  relation  to  man  ;  he  feels  it,  alike  in  his  joy- 
ful moods  and  in  his  sorrowful.  It  is  to  him  part 
of  what  he  calls  "the  universal  plan,"  but  he 
nowhere  reasons  about  the  life  of  Nature  as  he 
often  does  so  trenchantly  about  that  of  man. 

THE  BALLADS. 

But  another  affluent  to  the  growing  sentiment, 
besides  Burns,  was  the  ballad-poetry  rediscovered, 
we  may  say,  towards  the  end  of  last  century. 
The  most  decisive  mark  of  this  change  in  literary 
taste  was  the  collection  by  Bishop  Percy  of  the 
"Reliques  of  Ancient  Poetry"  in  1765 ;  and  this 
production  did  much  to  deepen  and  expand  the 
taste  out  of  which  itself  arose.  The  impulse 
which  began  with  Bishop  Percy  may  be  said  to 
have  culminated  when  Scott  gave  to  the  world 
his  "  Minstrelsy  of  the  Scottish  Border,"  in  the 
opening  years  of  the  present  century. 

The  ballads  of  course  are  mainly  engaged  with 
human  incidents,  heroic  and  legendary.  Yet  they 
contain  many  side-glances  at  Nature,  as  it  inter 


GOLDSMITH,  AND  BURNS.  231 

wove  itself  with  the  actions  or  the  sufferings  of 
men,  which  are  very  affecting.  This  is  the  way 
that  the  sight  of  Ettrick  Forest  struck  the  king 
and  his  men  as  they  marched  against  the  outlaw 
who  "  won  "  there  — 

"  The  king  was  cuming  thro'  Caddon  Ford, 

And  full  five  thousand  men  was  he ; 

They  saw  the  derke  Foreste  them  before, 

They  thought  it  awsome  for  to  see." 

Or  take  again  the  impression  made  on  the 
traveling  knight  as  he  comes  on  Clyde  in  full 
flood:  — 

"  As  he  gaed  owre  yon  high  high  hill        • 

And  doun  yon  dowie  den, 
There  was  a  roar  in  Clyde  water, 
Had  fear'd  a  hundred  men." 

Or  that  other  gentler  pathetic  touch,  where  the 
maiden  says  — 

"  Yestreen  I  dreamed  a  dolefu'  dream 

I  fear  there  will  be  s'orrow, 
I  dreamed  I  pu'd  the  heather  green 
Wi'  my  true  love,  on  Yarrow. 

"  0  gentle  wind,  that  bloweth  south, 

From  where  my  love  repaireth, 
Convey  a  kiss  from  his  dear  mouth, 
And  tell  me  how  he  fareth  !  " 

In  verses  such  as  these,  which  abound  through- 
out the  popular  ballads  and  songs,  we  see  the 
outer  world,  not  as  it  appeared  to  the  highly  edu- 
cated poet,  seeking  to  express  it  in  artistic  phrase, 
but  as  it  showed  itself  to  the  eyes  and  hearts  of 
country -people,  living  quite  familiarly  among  its 


232  NATVRE  IN  COLLlNtf,   GRAY, 

sights  and  sounds.  Much  more  might  be  said  of 
the  natural  imagery  of  the  ballads,  and  of  the 
feeling  toward  the  outer  world  indicated  by  it. 
Suffice  it  to  note  that  the  simplicity  and  pathos, 
both  of  sentiment  and  of  expression,  which  the 
ballads  contained,  entering,  with  other  influences, 
into  the  minds  of  the  young  generation  which 
first  welcomed  them,  called  up  another  view  of 
Nature  than  that  which  the  literary  poets  had 
expressed,  and  affected  most  deeply  both  the  feel- 
ing and  the  form  of  the  new  poetry  of  Nature 
which  this  century  brought  in. 

OSSIAN. 

One  more  poetic  influence,  born  of  last  cent- 
ury, must  be  noticed  before  we  close.  I  mean 
the  Celtic  or  Ossianic  feeling  about  Nature. 

I  am  not  going  now  to  discuss  whether  Mac- 
pherson  composed  the  Gaelic  poems  which  still 
pass  for  Ossian's,  or  whether  he  only  collected 
songs  which  had  been  floated  down  by  tradition 
from  a  remote  antiquity.  Whichever  view  we 
take,  it  cannot  be  questioned  that  the  appearance 
of  this  poetry  gave  to  the  English-speaking  mind 
the  thrill  of  a  new  and  strange  emotion  about 
mountain  scenery.  Whether  the  poetry  was  old, 
w  the  product  of  last  century,  it  describes,  as  none 
other  does,  the  desolation  of  dusky  moors,  the 
solemn  brooding  of  the  mists  on  the  mountains, 
th3  occasional  looking  through  them  of  sun  by 
day,  of  moon  and  stars  by  night,  the  gloom  oi 


GOLDSMITH,  AND  BURNS.  233 

dark  cloudy  Bens  or  cairns,  with  flashing  cata- 
racts, the  ocean  with  its  storms  as  it  breaks  on 
the  West  Highland  shores  or  on  the  headlands 
of  the  Hebrides.  Wordsworth,  though  an  unbe- 
liever in  Ossian,  felt  that  the  fit  dwelling  for  hia 
epirit  was 

"  Where  rocks  are  rudely  heaped  and  rent 
As  by  a  spirit  turbulent, 
Where  sights  are  rough  and  sounds  are  wild 
And  everything  unreconciled, 
In  some  complaining  dim  retreat, 
For  fear  and  melancholy  meet." 

And  such  are  the  scenes  which  the  Ossianic  po- 
etry mainly  dwells  on.  Here  is  a  description  of  a 
battle  — 

"  As  hundred  winds  'mid  oaks  of  great  mountains, 
As  hundred  torrents  from  lofty  hills, 
As  clouds  in  darkness  rushing  on, 
As  the  great  ocean  tumbling  on  the  shore, 
So  vast,  so  sounding,  dark  and  stern, 
Met  the  fierce  warriors  on  Lena. 
The  shout  of  the  host  on  the  mountain  height 
Was  like  thunder  on  a  night  of  storms, 
When  bursts  the  cloud  on  Cona  of  the  glens, 
And  thousand  spirits  wildly  shriek 
On  the  waste  whirlwind  of  the  hills." 

And  yet,  though  this  is  the  prevailing  tone,  it  is 
broken  at  times  by  gleams  of  tender  light  — 

"  Pleasing  to  me  are  the  words  of  songs, 
Pleasing  the  tale  of  the  time  that  is  gone ; 
Soothing  as  noiseless  dew  of  morning  mild 
On  the  brake  and  knoll  of  roes, 
When  slowly  rises  the  sun 
On  the  silent  fcank  of  hoary  Bens  — 


234      NATURE  IN  COLLINS,   GRAY,  ETC. 

The  loch,  unruffled,  far  away, 

Lies  calm  and  blue  on  the  floor  of  the  glens."  l 

Whatever  men  may  now  think  of  them,  there 
cannot  be  a  doubt  but  these  mountain  monotones 
took  the  heart  of  Europe  with  a  new  emotion, 
and  prepared  it  for  that  passion  for  mountains 
which  has  since  possessed  it. 

Cowper,  Burns,  the  Ballads,  Ossian,  all  these 
had  entered  into  the  minds  that  were  still  young 
when  this  century  opened,  and  added  each  a  fresh 
element  of  feeling,  and  opened  a  new  avenue  of 
vision  into  the  life  of  Nature.  When  the  great 
earthquake  of  the  Revolution  had  shaken  men's 
souls  to  their  centre,  and  brought  up  to  the  sur- 
face thoughts  and  aspirations  for  humanity  never 
known  till  then,  the  deepened  and  expanded 
hearts  of  men  opened  themselves  to  receive  Nat- 
ure into  them  in  a  way  they  had  never  done  be- 
fore, and  to  love  her  with  a  new  passion.  But 
original  as  this  impulse  in  the  present  century 
has  been,  we  must  not  forget  how  much  it  owed, 
both  in  itself  and  in  its  manifold  forms  of  expres- 
sion, to  the  poetry  of  Nature  which  the  eighteenth 
century  bequeathed.  Of  that  poetry  there  were 
two  main  streams,  a  literary  and  a  popular.  Of 
these  the  popular  one  was  probably  the  most 
powerful  in  moulding  the  Poetry  that  was  about 
to  be. 

1  From  Dr.  Clerk's  neV  translation  of  Ossian. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 

WORDSWORTH  AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE. 

THERE  are  at  least  three  distinct  stages  in 
men's  attitude  towards  the  external  world.  First 
comes  the  unconscious  love  of  children  —  of 
those  at  least  whose  home  is  in  the  country  —  for 
all  rural  things,  for  birds  and  beasts,  for  the  trees 
and  the  fields.  The  next  stage  is  that  of  youth 
and  early  manhood,  which  commonly  gets  so  ab- 
sorbed in  trade,  and  business,  politics,  literature, 
or  science,  —  that  is,  in  the  practical  world  of 
man,  that  the  early  caring  for  Nature  disappears 
from  the  heart,  perhaps  never  again  to  revisit  it. 
The  third  and  last  stage  is  that  of  —  some  at 
least,  perhaps  of  m^ny  —  men,  who,  after  much 
intercourse  with  the  world,  and  after  having,  it 
may  be,  suffered  in  it,  return  to  the  calm,  cool 
places  of-  Nature,  and  find  there  a  solace,  a  re- 
freshment, something  in  harmony  with  their  best 
thoughts,  which  they  have  not  discovered  in  their 
vouth,  it  may  be  because  they  then  less  needed  it. 

Something  like  this  takes  place  in  the  history 
of  the  race.  Not  to  mention  the  savage  state,  men 
M  the  primeval  era,  when  history  first  finds  them, 
are  affected  by  the  visible  world  around  them 


236  WORDSWORTH 

much  as  we  see  children  and  boys  now  are.  Nat- 
ure is  almost  everything  to  them.  They  use  the 
forces,  and  receive  the  influences  of  it,  if  not  in 
a  wholly  animal  way,  yet  in  a  quite  unconscious, 
unreflecting  way.  Then  advancing  civilization 
•  .creates  city  life  and  affairs,  in  which , man,  with 
his  material,  social,"  and  mental  interests,  takes 
the  place  of  Nature,  which  then  retires  into  the 
background.  The  love  of  it  either  wholly  disap- 
pears or  becomes  a  very  subordinate  matter.  So 
it  has  been,  so  it  still  is,  with  whole  populations, 
which  know  nothing  beyond  the  purlieus  of  great 
cities.  But  probably  the  intensest  feeling  for 
Nature  is  that  which  is  engendered  out  of  the 
heart  of  the  latest,  perhaps  over-refined,  civiliza- 
tion. Ages  that  have  been  over-civilized  turn 
away  from  their  too  highly-strung  interests,  their 
too  feverish  excitements,  to  find  a  peculiar  relish 
in  the  calm,  the  coolness,  the  equability  of  Nat- 
ure. Vinet  has  wejl  said  that  "the  more  the 
soul  has  been  cultivated  by  social  intercourse,  and 
especially  the  more  it  has  suffered  from  it,  the 
more,  in  short,  society  is  disturbed  and  agonized, 
the  more  rich  and  profound  Nature  becomes,  -^X[ 
mysteriously  eloquent  for  the  one  who  comes  to 
her  from  out  the.ardent  and  tumultuous  centre  of 
civilization. 

Towards  the  end  of  last  century  Europe  had 
reached  this  third  stage.  In  all  the  foremost 
nations  it  showed  itself  by  this,  as  one  among 
many  new  symptoms,  that  there  was  an  awaken- 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      237 

ing  to  the  presence  of  Nature,  and  to  the  power 
of  it,  with  an  intimacy  and  vividness  unknown 
before.  Men  became  aware  of  the  presence  of 
the  visible  world,  and,  almost  startled  by  it,  they 
asked  what  it  meant.  What  was  so  old  and 
familiar  came  home  to  them  as  if  it  were  now 
for  the  first  time  discovered.  Here  and  there 
were  men  who,  having  had  their  fevered  pulses 
stimulated  almost  to  madness  by  the  throes  that 
preceded  or  accompanied  the  Revolution,  turned 
instinctively  to  find  repose  in  the  eternal  fresh- 
ness that  is  in  the  outer  world.  This  tendency 
showed  itself  in  different  ways  in  different  coun- 
tries, and  expressed  itself  variously,  according  to 
the  nature  of  the  men  who  were  the  organs  of  it. 
In  France  this  new  passion  for  Nature  found  a  \ 
representative  in  Rousseau,  as  early  as  1759,  in 
whose  writings,  in  spite  of  their  mawkish  senti- 
ment, their  morbid  "  self -torturing,"  their  false 
politics  and  distorted  morality,  all  men  of  taste 
have  felt  the  fascination  of  their  eloquence  and 
the  picturesqueness  with  which  the  shores  of  the 
Leman  Lake  are  described.  Later  in  the  century, 
Goethe,  in  Germany,  expressed  the  same  feeling 
with  all  the  difference  there  is  between  the  Teu- 
tonic and  the  Gallic  genius.  More  than  any  poet 
before  him,  or  any  since,  he  combined  the  scien- 
tific with  the  poetic  view  of  Nature,  or  rather  he 
studied  the  facts  and  laws  of  Nature  with  the  eye 
of  a  physicist,  and  saw  the  beauty  that  is  in  these 
with  the  eye  of  a  poet.  It  has  been  said  of  him 


238  WORDSWORTH 

that  he  worshiped  God  in  Nature.  It  would  be 
more  true  to  say,  that  perceiving  intelligently  the 
unity  that  pervades  all  things,  he  felt  intensely 
the  beauty  of  that  unity,  he  delighted  in  the 
wide  views  of  the  Universe  which  science  had 
recently  unfolded.  But  as  the  moral  side  of 
things,  as  duty  and  self-surrender  hardly  entered 
into  his  thoughts,  it  is  misleading  to  speak  of 
merely  scientific  contemplation,  and  aesthetic  de- 
light as  worship  or  devotion.  Worship  implies  a 
personal  relation  to  a  personal  being,  and  this 
was  hardly  in  Goethe's  thoughts  at  all.  But 
whatever  may  be  the  true  account  of  his  ultimate 
views,  he  is  the  German  representative  of  the 
great  wave  of  feeling  of  which  I  speak. 

It  was  a  fortunate  thing  for  England  that  when 
the  time  had  come  when  she  was  to  open  and 
expand  her  heart  towards  Nature,  as  she  had 
never  before  done,  the  function  of  leading  the 
new  movement  and  of  expressing  it  was  com- 
mitted to  a  soul  like  Wordsworth's, —  a  soul  in 
which  sensibility,  far  healthier  than  that  of  lious- 
seau,  and  deeper  than  that  of  Goethe,  was  based 
on  a  moral  nature,  simple,  solid,  profound.  It 
is  the  way  in  all  great  changes  of  every  kind. 
When  the  change  is  to  come,  the  man  who  is  by 
his  nature  predestined  to  make  it  comes  too.  So 
it  was  in  history  and  in  art.  Contemporary  with 
Wordsworth's  movement,  a  change  in  these  was 
needed.  Men  ever  since  the  Reformation  had  got 
BO  absorbed  in  the  new  older  of  things,  that  they 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      239 

had  quite  forgotten  the  old,  and  had  become  igno 
rant  of  and  unsympathetic  to  the  past.  So  his- 
tory, a'rt,  architecture,  and  many  other  things,  had 
become  meagre  and  starved.  Men's  minds,  in  this 
country  at  least,  had  to  be  made  aware  that  there 
had  lived  brave  men  before  Cromwell,  good  men 
before  Luther  and  Knox.  And  Walter  Scott  was 
born  into  the  world  to  teach  it  this  lesson,  and 
to  let  in  the  sympathies  of  men  in  full  tide  on 
the  buried  centuries.  The  change  which  Scott 
wrought  in  men's  way  of  apprehending  histpry 
was  not  greater  than  that  which  Wordsworth 
wrought  in  their  feelings  towards  the  world  of 
Nature,  with  which,  not  less  than  with  the  world  ; 
of  History,  their  lives  are  encompassed.  If  Scott 
taught  men  to  look  with  other  eyes  on  the  char- 
acters of  the  past,  Wordsworth  not  the  less  taught 
them  to  do  the  same  towards  the  present  earth 
around  them,  and  the  heavens  above  them.  This 
was  indeed  but  half  of  Wordsworth's  function. 
For  he  had  moral  truth  to  communicate  to  his 
generation,  not  less  than  naturalistic  truth.  It  is, 
however,  with  the  latter  order  of  truth  that  we 
have  now  to  do.  Yet  in  him  each  kind  of  truth 
was  so  interpenetrated  with  the  other,  they  were 
balanced  in  such  harmony,  that  it  is  not  possible 
in  any  study  of  him  to  dissever  them. 

Thus  it  seems  that  two  poets  were  the  chief 
agents  in  letting  in  on  men's  minds  two  great 
bodies  of  sentiment,  the  one  historical,  the  other 
naturalistic,  which  have  leavened  all  modern 


240  WORDSWORTH 

society,  and  even  visibly  changed  the  outward 
face  of  things.  Sir  W.  Stirling  Maxwell,  at  the 
Scott  Centenary,  remarked  that  the  mention  of 
any  spot  by  Scott,  in  his  poems  or  romances,  has 
increased  the  market  value  of  the  surrounding 
acres  more  than  the  highest  farming  could  do. 
And  there  is  not  an  inn  or  small  farm-house  in  all 
the  Lake  country  which  does  not  reap  every 
summer  in  hard  coin  the  results  of  Wordsworth's 
poetry.  Can  even  the  stoutest  utilitarian,  see- 
ing these  things,  say  that  Poetry  is  mere  senti- 
mentajxmoonshine,  with  no  power  on  men's  lives 
anpkactions  ? 

To  understand  what  Wordsworth  did  as  an 
interpreter  of  Nature,  we  must  bear  in  mind  the 
experience  through  which  he  passed,  the  natural 
gifts  and  the  mental  discipline  which  fitted  him 
to  be  so.  He  was  sprung  from  a  hardy  North  of 
England  stock  that  had  lived  for  generations  in 
Yorkshire,  afterwards  in  Cumberland,  in  a  social 
place  intermediate  between  the  squires  and  the 
yeomen,  and  from  both  his  parents  he  had  re- 
ceived the  inheritance  of  a  moral  nature  that  was 
healthy,  frugal,  and  robust.  Early  left  an  orphan^ 
with  three  brothers  and  one  sole  sister,  his  child- 
ish recollections  attached  themselves  rather  to 
school  than  to  home.  At  the  age  of  eight  he 
went  with  his  brothers  to  Hawkshead,  "  an  an- 
tique village,  standing  a  little  way  to  the  west  of 
Windermere,  on  its  own  lake  of  Esthwaite,  and 
possessing  an  ancient  and  once  famous  grammar 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  01    NATURE.      241 

school."  There  he  boarded  with  a  humble  village 
dame,  and  attended  the  school  by  day ;  but  it 
was  a  school  in  which  our  modern  high-pressure 
system  was  unknown,  and  which  left  the  bojs 
ample  leisure  to  wander  late  and  early  by  the 
lake-margins,  through  the  copses,  and  on  the 
mountain-sides.  Of  the  village  dame  under 
whose  roof  he  lodged  he  has  left  a  pleasing  por- 
trait in  "  The  Prelude."  The  early  and  not  the 
least  beautiful  part  of  that  poem,  and  many  of  his 
most  delightful  shorter  poems,  refer  to  things 
seen  and  felt  at  that  time.  For,  as  the  late  Arthur 
Clough  has  truly  said,  "  it  was  then  and  there  be- 
yond a  doubt,  that  the  substantive  Wordsworth 
was  formed ;  it  was  then  and  there  that  the  tall 
rock  and  sounding  cataract  haunted  him  like  a 
passion,  and  that  his  genius  and  whole  being  ' 
united  and  identified  itself  with  external  Nature." 
From  this  primitive  village  school,  he  passed  like 
other  north-country  lads,  to  Cambridge,  where  he 
spent  three  years,  the  least  profitable  years  of 
his  life,  if  any  years  are  unprofitable  to  a  man 
like  him.  More  profit  he  got  from  summer  visits 
to  his  own  country,  Hawkshead,  and  his  mother's 
relations,  and  especially  from  a  walking  tour 
through  France,  Switzerland,  and  the  Italian 
lakes,  —  regions  then  but  little  trod  by  English- 
men. After  graduating  at  Cambridge  he  gladly 
left  it  in  1791  to  plunge  headlong  into  the  first 
fervor  of  the  French  Revolution, 

The  high  hopes  which  that  event  awoke  in  him, 

16 


242  WORDSWORTH 

as  in  many  another  enthusiast,  the  dreams  that  a 
new  era  was  about  to  dawn  on  down-trodden 
man,  these  things  are  an  oft-told  tale.  When  the 
revolutionary  frenzy  culminated  in  bloodshed  and 
the  Reign  of  Terror,  Wordsworth's  faith  in  it 
remained  for  long  unshaken  and  unchanged.  On 
the  scenes  which  appalled  others  he  looked  un- 
dismayed, and  even  seriously  pondered  himself 
becoming  a  leader  in  the  business.  Luckily  for 
himself  and  the  world,  he  was  recalled  from  France 
towards  the  close  of  1792  by  some  stern  home- 
measures,  probably  the  cutting  short  of  his  always 
scanty  supplies.  In  1793  he  published  an  "  Apol- 
ogy for  the  French  Revolution,"  in  which  he  rails 
against  all  the  most  cherished  institutions  of 
England,  and  recommends  the  Utopia  of  absolute 
democracy  as  the  one  remedy  for  all  the  ills 
which  afflict  the  world.  Not  even  the  murder  of 
Louis  XVL,  nor  the  bloodshed  and  horrors  which 
followed,  shook  him.  The  fall  of  Robespierre  in 
July,  1794,  gave  him  new  heart  to  believe  that  his 
golden  dreams  would  yet  be  realized.  But  when 
from  the  struggle  he  saw  emerge,  not  freedom, 
peace,  and  universal  brotherhood,  but  the  First 
Consul  with  his  armies,  his  high  hopes  at  last 
gave  way.  Despairing  of  the  destinies  of  man- 
kind, he  wandered  about  the  country  aimless,  de- 
jected, almost  in  despondency.  Public  affairs 
lever  appear  sx>  dark  as  when  a  man's  own  pri- 
vate affairs  are  getting  desperate.  And  such  was 
Wordsworth's  case  at  that  time.  He  had  no  pro- 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      243 

fession,  no  aim  in  life,  was  almost  entirely  desti- 
tute of  funds.  From  absolute  want  he  was  re- 
lieved in  1795  by  the  bequest  of  nine  hundred 
pounds  left  to  him  by  his  friend  Raisley  Calvert. 
This  enabled  his  sister — a  soul  hardly  less  gifted, 
and  altogether  as  noble  as  himself  —  from  whom 
he  had  been  much  separated,  to  take  up  house 
with  him,  and  to  minister  not  only  to  his  bodily 
but  much  more  to  his  mental  needs.  Seeing  that 
his  office  on  earth  was  to  be  a  poet,  she  turned 
him  away  from  brooding  over  dark  social  and 
moral  problems,  and  led  him  to  look  once  more 
on  the  open  face  of  Nature,  and  to  mingle  famil- 
iarly with  humble  men.  They  made  themselves 
a  home,  first  in  Dorsetshire,  then  in  Somerset- 
shire, where  Coleridge  joined  them.  Then  it  was 
that,  warmed  by  the  society  of  his  sister  and  his 
poet  friend,  and  wandering  freely  among  the  hills 
of  Quantock,  the  fountain  of  his  poetic  heart  was 
opened,  which  was  to  flow  on  for  years.  Soon 
followed  the  final  settlement,  in  the  last  days  of 
last  century,  in  the  small  cottage  at  the  Town- 
head  of  Grasmere,  which  became  their  home  for 
more  than  eight  years,  and  will  forever  continue 
to  be  identified  with  the  most  splendid  era  of 
Wordsworth's  genius.  For  it  was  during  the 
years  immediately  preceding  Grasmere,  and  dur- 
ing the  eight  Grasmere  years,  that  he  attained  to 
embody  in  one  poem  after  another  the  finest 
affluence  of  his  spirit. 
It  was  almost  entirely  at  Grasmere,  between 


244  WORDSWORTH 

the  years  1800  and  1805,  that  he  composed  "  The 
Prelude,"  an  autobiographic  poem  on  the  growth 
of  his  own  mind.  It  is  for  the  purpose  of  better 
understanding  this  poem  that  I  have  given  the 
foregoing  brief  framework  of  the  outward  facts 
of  Wordsworth's  life  on  which  "  The  Prelude  " 
comments  from  'within.  The  poem  consists  of. 
fourteen  books  in  blank  verse,  probably  the  most 
elaborate  biographic  poem  ever  composed.  Read- 
ers of  Lord  Macaulay's  Life  may  perhaps  remem- 
ber his  remarks  on  it:  "There  are,"  he  says,  "the 
old  raptures  about  mountains  and  cataracts ;  the 
old  flimsy  philosophy  about  the  effects  of  scenery 
on  the  mind ;  the  old  crazy  mystical  metaphys- 
ics ;  the  endless  wildernesses  of  dull,  flat,  prosaic 
declamations  interspersed."  No  one  need  be  as- 
tonished at  this  estimate  by  Lord  Macaulay.  We 
see  but  as  we  feel.  To  him,  being  such  as  he 
was,  it  was  not  given  to  feel  or  to  see  the  things 
which  Wordsworth  most  cared  for.  No  wonder, 
then,  that  to  him  the  poem  that  spoke  of  these 
things  was  a  weariness.  Doubtless  much  may 
be  said  against  such  a  subject  for  a  poem  —  the 
growth  of  a  poet's  mind  from  childhood  to  ma- 
turity :  much  too  against  the  execution,  the  sus- 
tained self-analysis,  the  prolixity  of  some  parts, 
the  verbosity  and  sometimes  the  vagueness  of  the 
language.  But  after  making  full  deduction  for 
all  these  things,  it  still  remains  a  wonderful  and 
unique  poem,  most  instructive  to  those  who  will 
take  the  trouble  required  to  master  snch  a  work. 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      245 

If  after  a  certain  acquaintance  with  Wordsworth's 
better-known  and  more  attractive  poems,  a  per- 
son will  but  study  "  The  Prelude,"  he  will  return 
to  the  other  poems  with  a  new  insight  into  their 
meaning  and  their  truth. 

How  highly  Coleridge  esteemed  it  those  know 
who  remember  the  poem  in  which  he  describes 
the  impression  made  on  himself  by  hearing 
Wordsworth  read  it  aloud  for  the  first  time  after 
its  completion :  — 

"  An  Orphic  song  indeed, 

A  song  divine,  of  high  and  passionate  thoughts, 
To  their  own  music  chanted." 

This  poem,  read  to  Coleridge  in  1805,  was  not 
given  to  the  world  till  July,  1850,  a  few  months 
after  the  author's  death.  The  reason  why  I  shall 
now  dwell  on  it  at  some  length  is  because  no 
other  production  of  Wordsworth's  gives  us  so  deep 
and  sustained  a  view  of  his  feeling  about  Nature, 
and  of  the  relation  which  he  believed  to  exist 
between  Nature  and  the  soul  of  man. 

In  Wordsworth's  mental  history  two  periods 
are  especially  prominent.  The  first  was  his 
school-time  at  Hawkshead,  by  Esthwaite  Lake, 
eight  years  in  all.  The  second  was  the  mental 
crisis  through  which  he  passed  after  his  return 
from  France  till  he  settled  with  his  sister  in  the 
soith  of  England,  and  ultimately  at  Grasmere. 
The  first  was  the  spring-time  of  his  soul  —  a  fair 
spring-time,  in  which  all  the  young  impulses  and 
intuitions  were  first  awakened,  when  the  colors 


246  WORDSWORTH 

were  laid  in  and  deeply  engrained  into  every 
fibre  of  his  being.  The  second  was  the  trial 
time,  the  crisis  of  his  spirit,  in  which  all  his  early 
impulses,  impressions,  intuitions,  were  brought 
out  into  distinct  consciousness,  questioned  and 
tested  —  vindicated  by  reason,  and  embraced  by 
will  as  his  guiding  principles  for  life  —  in  which, 
as  one  may  say,  all  that  had  hitherto  existed  in- 
wardly in  fluid  vapor  was  gathered  up,  condensed, 
solidified  into  deliberate  substance  and  permanent 
purpose. 

A  healthful,  happy,  blissful  school-time  was 
'  that  which  Wordsworth  spent  by  Esthwaite  Lake 
—  natural,  blameless,  pure,  as  ever  boy  spent. 
School  rules  were  few,  discipline  was  light,  school 
hours  were  short,  and,  these  over,  the  boys  were 
free  to  roam  where  they  willed,  far  or  near,  high 
and  low,  early  and  late,  sometimes  far  into  the 
frosty  starlight.  Then  it  was  that  Nature  first 

"  Peopled  his  mind  with  forms  sublime  and  fair," 

came  to  him  like  instincts  unawares,  as  he  went 
about  his  usual  sports  with  his  companions. 
Rowing  on  the  lake,  snaring  woodcocks  among 
the  hill  copses  by  night,  skating  by  starlight  on 
the  frozen  lake,  climbing  crags  to  harry  the 
raven's  nest,  scudding  on  horseback  over  Furness 
Sands : — 

"  From  week  to  week,  from  month  to  month,  we  lived 
A  round  of  tumult."       ,      ' 

In  all  this  there  was  not  anything  lackadaisical, 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      247 

nor  any  maundering  about  Nature,  but  only  the 
life  you  might  expect  in  a  hardy  mountain-bred 
boy,  with  robust  body  and  strong  animal  spirits 
These  things  he  shared  with  other  boys.  There 
was  nothing  special  in  them.  But  what  was  pe- 
culiar, eminently  his  own,  was  this  —  the  feelings 
that  sometimes  came  to  him  in  the  very  midst  of  i 
the  wild  hill  sports  —  in  the  pauses  of  the  bois- 
terous games.  There  were  times  when,  detached 
Irom  his  companions,  alone  in  lonely  places,  he 
felt  from  within 

"  Gleams  like  the  flashing  of  a  shield,  the  earth 
And  common  face  of  Nature  spake  to  him 
Rememberable  things." 

During  his  later  school  years  he  tells  us  that 
he  would  walk  alone  under  the  quiet  stars,  and 

"Feel  whatever  there  is  of  power  in  sound 
To  breathe  an  elevated  mood,  by  form 
Or  image  unprofaned,  and  I  would  stand, 
In  the  night  blackened  with  a  coming  storm, 
Beneath  some  rock,  listening  to  notes  that  are 
The  ghostly  language  of  the  ancient  earth, 
Or  make  their  dim  abode  in  distant  winds, 
Thence  did  I  drink  the  visionary  power." 

He  speaks,  too,  of  a  morning  when  he  had  stolen 
forth  before  even  the  birds  were  astir, 

"  And  sate  among  the  woods 
Alone  upon  some  jutting  eminence, 
At  the  first  gleam  of  dawnlight,  when  the  vale, 
Yet  slumbering,  lay  in  utt-er  solitude. 
How  shall  I  seek  the  origin  ?  where  find 
Faith  in  the  marvelous  things  which  then  I  felt  f 
Oft  in  these  moments  such  a  hoi"  calm 


248  WORDSWORTH 

"Would  overspread  my  soul,  that  bodily  eyes 
Were  utterly  forgotten,  and  what  I  saw 
Appeared  like  something  in  myself,  a  dream, 
A  prospect  in  the  mind." 

These  were  his  supreme  moments  of  existence, 
when  the  vision  first  dawned  upon  his  soul,  when 
without  knowing  it  he  was  baptized  with  an  efflu- 
ence from  on  high,  consecrated  to  be  the  poc't- 
priest  of  Nature's  mysteries.  The  light  that  then 
came  to  him  was  in  after  years  "the  master-light 
of  all  his  seeing,"  the  fountain-head  of  his  highest 
inspirations.  From  this  was  drawn  that  peculiar 
ethereal  gleam  which  rests  on  his  finest  after  pro- 
ductions —  the  ode  to  the  Cuckoo,  the  poems  on 
Matthew,  Tintern  Abbey,  the  Intimations  of  Im- 
mortality, and  many  another  poem.  Not  that  he 
knew  in  these  accesses  of  soul  what  he  was  re- 
ceiving. He  felt  them  at  the  time,  and  passed 
on.  Only  long  afterwards,  when 

"  The  eagerness  of  infantine  desire  " 

was  over,  in  hours  of  tranquil  thought,  the  remem- 
brance of  those  bright  moments  recurred,  with  a 
sense  of  distance  from  his  present  self  so  remote, 
that 

"  Often  did  he  seem 

Two  consciousnesses,  conscious  of  himself, 
And  of  some  other  being." 

The  Prelude  contains  nothing  more  beautiful 
or  instructive  than  the  whole  account  of  chat 
Hawkshead  school-time.  It  portrays  the  wonder- 
ful boyhood  of  a  wonderful  boy,  though  neither 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      249 

he  himself  nor  others  then  thought  him  the  least 
wonderful.  Reflecting  on  it  long  afterwards, 
Wordsworth  saw,  and  every  student  of  his  po- 
etry will  see,  that  in  that  time  lay  the  secret  of 
his  power,  by  the  impulses  then  received  his 
whole  philosophy  of  life  and  of  poetry  was  de- 
termined. Natural  objects,  he  tells  us,  then  came 
home  to  him  primarily  through  the  human  affec-  § 
tions  and  associations  of  which  they  are  the  out-  y 
ward  framework, — just  as  the  infant  when  he 
first  comes  to  know  sensible  objects,  learns  to  as- 
sociate them  with  the  interventions  of  the  touch, 
the  look,  the  tenderness  of  its  mother.  Gradu- 
ally, even  before  school-time  was  past,  Nature 
had  come  to  have  a  meaning  and  an  attraction  for 
him,  by  herself,  without  the  need  of  such  inter- 
vening agents. 

Further,  he  tells  us,  that  while  for  him  at  that 
time  each  individual  rock,  tree,  and  flower,  had 
an  interest  of  its  own,  he  came  deeply  to  feel  the  ^ 
great   living   whole   which   Nature   is.     All   his 
thoughts,  he  says,  were  steeped  in  feeling. 

"I  was  only  then 

Contented,  when  with  bliss  ineffable 
I  felt  the  sentiment  of  being  spread 
O'er  all  that  moves,  and  all  that  seemeth  still ; 
O'er  all  that  lost  beyond  the  reach  of  thought          ^ 
And  human  knowledge,  to  the  human  eye 
Invisible,  yet  liveth  to  the  heart ; 
O'er  all  that  leaps,  and  runs,  and  shouts,  and  sings, 
Or  bealjs  the  gladsome  air ;  o'er  all  that  glides 
Beneath  the  wave,  yea,  in  the  wave  itself 
And  mighty  depth  of  waters.    Wonder  not 


250  WORDSWORTH 

If  high  the  transport,  great  the  joy  I  felt, 
Communing  in  this  sort  through  earth  and  heaven 
With  every  form  of  creature,  as  it  looked 
Towards  the  Uncreated  with  a  countenance 
Of  adoration,  with  an  eye  of  love." 

"  Towards  the  Uncreated,"  —  the  looking  thither- 
ward through  both  Nature  and  his  own  moral 
being,  so  as  to  find  both  based  on  one  Divine 
order,  witnessing  to  one  Eternal  Being,  this  is 
one  of  Wordsworth's  deepest  tendencies.  This  is 
his  teaching  in  many  forms,  emphatically  in  the 
"  Ode  to  Duty,"  of  which,  after  recognizing  duty 
as  the  law  of  his  own  being,  he  exclaims, 

"  Thou  dost  preserve  the  stars  from  wrong ; 
And  the  eternal  heavers  through  thee  are  fresh  and  strong." 

The  passage  last  quoted  from  "  The  Prelude  " 
has  the  same  meaning,  and  testifies  that  from 
and  through  his  communing  with  Nature  he  had 
learnt,  even  in  boyhood,  a  true  and  real  natural 
religion — had  felt  his  soul  come  into  contact  with 
Him  who  is  at  once  the  author  and  upholder  of 
Nature  and  of  man.  Not  perhaps  that,  in  his 
school  days,  he  was  fully  aware  of  what  he  then 
learnt.  He  felt  at  the  time,  he  learnt  to  know 
what  he  felt  afterwards.  At  Cambridge,  when 
surrounded  by  trivial  and  uncongenial  inter- 
ests, he  became  aware  that  he  had  brought  with 
him  from  the  mountains  powers  to  counterwork 
these  — 

"Independent  solaces, 
Incumbencies  more  awful,  visitings 
From  the  Unholder  of  the  tranquil  souL" 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      251 

What  then  was  the  spiritual  nutriment  he  had 
gathered  from  that  boyhood  passed  in  Nature's 
immediate  presence  ?  He  had  felt,  and  after  re- 
flection had  made  the  feelings  a  rooted  and  habit- 
ual conviction,  that  the  world  without  him,  the 
thing  we  call  Nature,  is  not  a  dead  machine,  but 
something  all  pervaded  by  a  life  —  sometimes  he 
calls  it  a  soul;  that  this  living  Nature  was  a 
unity ;  that  there  was  that  in  it  which  awoke  in 
him  feelings  of  calmness,  awe,  and  tenderness; 
that  this  infinite  life  in  Nature  was  not  something 
which  he  attributed  to  Nature,  but  that  it  existed 
external  to  him,  independent  of  his  thoughts  and 
feelings,  and  was  in  no  way  the  creation  of  his 
own  mind;  that,  though  his  faculties  in  nowise 
created  those  qualities  in  Nature,  they  might  go 
forth  and  aspire  towards  them,  and  find  support 
in  them ;  that  even  when  he  was  withdrawn  from 
the  presence  of  that  Nature  and  these  qualities, 
yet  that  they  subsist  quite  independent  of  his 
perceptions  of  them.  And  the  conviction  that 
Nature  there  was  living  on  all  the  same,  whether 
he  heeded  her  or  not,  imparted  to  his  mind  kin- 
dred calm  and  coolness,  and  fed  it  with  thoughts 
of  majesty.  This,  or  something  like  it,  is  the 
conviction  which  he  tries  to  express  in  "  The 
Prelude."  Those  vague  emotions,  those  visionaiy 
gleams  which  came  to  him  in  the  happier  mo- 
ments of  boyhood,  before  which  the  solid  earth 
was  all  unsubstantiated  and  transfigured — these 
be  held  to  be,  though  he  could  not  prove  it,  inti 


252  WORDSWORTH 

mations  coming  to  his  soul  direct  from  God.     In 
one  of  these  moments,  a  glorious  summer  morn- 
ing, when  he  was  spending  a  Cambridge  vacation 
/  by  the  Lakes,  he  for  the  first  time  consciously 
felt  himself  to  be  a  dedicated  spirit,  consecrated 
to  truth  and  purity  and  high  unworldly  endeavor. 
Again,  the  invisible  voice  that  came  to  him 
^  through  the  visible  universe  was  not  in  him,  as 
has  often  been  asserted,  a  Pantheistic  conception. 
Almost  in  the  same  breath  he  speaks  of 

"  Nature's  self,  which  is  the  breath  of  God/' 
and 

"  His  pure  word  by  miracle  revealed." 

He  telj.8  us  that  he  held  the  speaking  face  of 
earth  and  heaven  to  be  an  organ  of  intercourse 
with  man,  — 

"  Established  by  the  sovereign  intellect 
Who  through  that  bodily  image  hath  diffused, 
As  might  appear  to  the  eye  of  fleeting  time, 
A  deathless  spirit." 

And  again,  he  says  that  even  if  the  earth  was  to 
be  burnt  up  and  to  disappear, 

"  Yet  would  the  living  Presence  still  subsist     J 
Victorious." 

To  assert  this,  whatever  it  may  be,  is  not  to 
preach  Pantheism.     It  is  only  to  make  the  earth 
.  not  a  mere  piece  of  mechanism  but  a  vital  entity, 
and  to  regard  it  as  in  living  and  intimate  relation   » 
with  Him  who  made  and  upholds  it,  and  speaka  / 
to  man  more  or  less  distinctly  through  it. 

I  pass  now  to  the  second  stage,  the  great  turn- 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      253 

ing  point  in  Wordsworth's  mental  history,  which 
lay  between  his  residence  in  France  and  his  set- 
tlement at  Grasmere,  that  is,  between  the  years 
1793  and  1800. 

The  three  years  he  had  spent  at  Cambridge, 
from  1787  till  the  end  of  1790,  if  they  did  noth- 
ing else  for  him,  had  begun  to  draw  out  his  social 
feelings.  The  order  of  his  interests  had  been 
this.  In  early  boyhood  animal  activity  and  trivial 
pleasures  had  engrossed  him.  In  due  time  these 
had  retired,  and,  before  school-time  was  over, 
Nature  stood  out  preeminent,  almost  alone,  in  his  *• 
affections.  Up  to  his  twenty-second  year,  man 
had  been  to  him  a  quite  subordinate  object. 
What  Cambridge  began,  residence  in  France  had 
perfected,  —  his  interest  in  man  for  his  own  sake, 
and  in  all  the  great  problems,  practical  and  spec- 
ulative, connected  with  man.  These  problems, 
present,  more  or  less,  to  every  age,  had  by  the 
revolutionary  fervor  been  quickened  into  feverish 
intensity,  and  driven  on  to  new  and  far-reaching 
issues.  Smitten  to  the  core  with  the  contagion 
of  the  time,  Wordsworth  began  to  meditate  feel- 
ingly on  man,  his  sufferings,  his  artificial  re- 
straints, his  aspirations,  his  destiny.  He  pon- 
dered long  and  deeply  the  questions  of  govern- 
ment, and  the  best  forms  of  it,  —  of  society,  of 
morality  and  its  grounds,  of  man's  perfection  and 
its  possibility.  Even  when  for  a  time  under  the 
Reign  of  Terror  his  immediate  hopes  from  the 
Revolution  faded,  yet  he  did  not  cease  to  ponder 


254  WORDSWORTH 

the  questions  which  recent  events  had  brought  to 
the  surface.  The  fall  of  Robespierre  and  his 
"  atheist  crew  "  revived  his  hopes.  Though  none 
of  the  public  acts  of  France  pleased  him,  yet  his 
faith  in  the  people  was  still  strong ;  no  external 
blunders,  he  beh'eved,  would  take  "  life  from  the 
young  Republic." 

For  a  while  he  dreamed  on  his  golden  dreams 
about  a  perfected  humanity.  Still  for  a  time  to 

him 

"  The  whole  earth 
The  beauty  wore  of  promise."   .    . 
"  Bliss  was  it  in  that  dawn  to  be  alive, 
But  to  the  young  was  heaven." 

But  when  Britain  declared  war  against  France, 
and  France  changed  a  war  of  self-defense  for 
one  of  aggression,  then  came  disgust  with  his 
own  country,  disappointment  and  vexation  with 
France,  despair  of  her  promoting  the  cause  of 
Liberty.  Still  he  clung  stubbornly  to  his  old 
tenets,  and  even  strained  them  farther.  At  last, 
when  he  saw  the  Emperor  crowned  by  the  Pope, 
this  was  too  much  for  him.  It  was  the  last  op- 
probrium, the  final  blow  to  his  republican  ardor. 
He  had  seen  a  people  from  whom  he  hoped  all 
things,  a  nation  which  erewhile  had  looked  up  in 
faith  to  heaven  for  manna,  take  a  lesson  from  the 
dog  returning  to  his  vomit.  Then  for  a  time  the 
whole  fabric  of  his  hope  and  faith  gave  way. 
He  fell  into  distrust,  not  only  of  nations,  but  of 
himself.  The  faiths,  intuitions,  aspirations  which 
te  had  hitherto  lived  by,  failed  him.  He  cros* 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      255 

quf  stioned  all  fundamental  principles,  and  if  they 
could  not  vindicate  themselves  by  formal  proof, 
rejected  them.  At  last,  losing  all  hold  on  con- 
vie  ion,  wearied  out  with  endless  perplexities,  he 
doubted  all  moral  truth,  and  gave  it  up  in  despair. 
With  his  hopes  for  man,  and  his  faith  hi  man's 
destiny,  the  poetic  vision  of  Nature,  which  had 
hitherto  been  with  him,  disappeared,  and  his  im- 
mediate converse  with  Him  who  through  Nature 
spoke  to  him  was  for  a  time  eclipsed.  Under  the 
tyranny  of  the  logical  and  analyzing  faculty,  his 
intelligence  was  no  longer  an  organ  which  trans- 
mitted clearly  the  light  from  without  to  the  light 
within  him,  but,  entangled  in  the  meshes  of  the 
finite  understanding,  he  could  for  a  time  see  01 
receive  nothing  which  he  could  not  verify  by 
logic.  He  looked  on  the  outer  world  no  more  in 
a  free  imaginative  way  as  of  old,  but  compared 
scene  with  scene,  and  judged  and  criticised  them 
by  artificial  rules. 

"  To  the  moods 

Of  time  and  season,  to  the  moral  power, 
The  affections  and  the  spirit  of  the  place 
Insensible." 

This  to  one  like  Wordsworth,  more  than  to  most 
men,  was  abnegation  of  his  higher  self,  was  in 
fact  moral  death.  It  was  the  lowest  depth  into 
which  he  sank,  the  climax  of  what  he  himself 
calls  "his  degradation." 

But  as  his  faith  in  man  and  his  love  of  Nature 
had  suffered  shipwreck  together,  it  was  by  the 


256  WORDSWORTH 

same  influence  they  were  restored.  From  the 
temporary  obscuration  of  the  master  vision,  the 
laying  asleep  of  his  inner  faculties,  the  first  thing 
to  arouse  him  was  the  influence  of  human  affec- 
tion, and  that  came  to  him  through  *he  presence 
of  his  sister,  his  "  sole  sister."  When  after  his 
return  from  France  he  was  wandering  about  aim- 
less and  dejected,  she  saw  and  understood  his 
mental  malady.  She  made  a  home  for  him,  and 
became  his  hourly  companion.  If  he  had  labored 
zealously  to  cut  off  his  heart  from  all  the  sources 
of  his  former  strength,  she  by  her  influence  and 
sympathy  maintained  for  him,  as  he  expresses  it, 
"a  saving  intercourse  with  his  true  self."  She 
saw  that  his  true  vocation  was  to  be  a  poet,  and  a 
teacher  of  men  through  poetry,  Narfd  bade  him 
seek  in  that  alone  "  his  office  upon  earth."  She 
took  him  once  more  to  lonely  and  beautiful  places, 
till  Nature  again  found  access  to  him,  and,  com- 
bining with  his  sister's  human  ministry, 

"Led  him  back 

To  those  sweet  counsels  between  head  and  heart, 
Whence  groweth  genuine  knowledge  fraught  with  peace." 

Thus  began  that  sanative  process  which  in 
time  restored  him  to  his  true  self,  to  "  his  natural 
graciousness  of  mind,"  and  made  him  that  bless- 
ing to  the  world  he  was  destined  to  become. 

But  there  was  not  a  restoration  only,  but  there 
came  through  that  same  sister  an  accession  of  new 
emotions,  an  opening  of  his  heart  to  influences 
heretofore  disregarded.  His  nature  was  orig- 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      257 

inally,  lie  tells  us,  somewhat  austere  and  unbend- 
ing. She  opened  his  eyes  to  perceive  in  Nature 
minute  lovelinesses  formerly  unnoticed,  his  heart 
to  feel  sympathies  and  tendernesses  for  human 
things  hitherto  uncared  for.  In  her  company, 
whether  they  wandered  about  the  country  or 
dwelt  in  a  settled  home,  his  former  delight  in 
Nature  returned.  He  felt  once  again,  like  the 
breath  of  spring,  visitings  of  the  imaginative 
power  come  to  him ;  the  overflowings  of  '<  the 
impassioned  life  "  that  is  in  Nature  streamed  in 
upon  him,  and  he  stood  in  her  presence  once 
more 

"  A  sensitive  being,  a  creative  soul." 
The  restoration,  the  sanative  process  I  speak 
of,  showed  itself  in  two  directions,  as  regards  his 
feeling  towards  man  and  towards  Nature. 

First  as  to  man  :  his  interests  and  sympathies, 
stimulated  to  excess  by  the  political  convulsions 
he  had  passed  through,  now  found  healthier  ob- 
jects in  the  laboring  poor  whom  he  conversed 
with  in  the  fields,  and  in  the  vagrants  he  met  on 
lonely  roads.  These  became  his  daily  schools. 
In  many  an  exquisite  poem  he  has  embalmed  the 
incidents  and  characters  he  saw  or  heard  of  at 
that  time.  His  early  upbringing  combined  with 
after  experience  and  reflection  to  make  him  es- 
teem simple  and  humble  life  more  than  artificial. 
The  homely  ways  of  the  people  he  had  spent  his 
boyhood  with  —  village  dames,  hardy  dalesmen 
and  shepherds  —  concurred  with  his  own  native 
17 


258  WORDSWORTH 

bias  to  make  him  love  and  esteem  what  is  per- 
manent, not  what  is  accidental  in  human  life,  the 
inner,  not  the  outer  man  of  men,  the  essential 
soul,  not  its  trappings  of  birth,  fortune,  and  posi- 
tion. This  native  bias  had  been  deepened  by  all 
he  had  seen,  felt,  and  thought  during  the  revolu- 
tionary ferment,  and  now  became  the  fixed  habit 
and  purpose  of  his  mind,  part  of  his  permanent 
self.  For  in  humble  men,  when  not  wholly 
crushed  or  hardened  by  penury,  he  seemed  to  see 
the  primary  passions  and  elementary  feelings  of 
human  nature  existing  as  it  were  in  their  native 
bed  —  freer,  stronger,  more  unalloyed  than  in 
men  of  so-called  position  and  education,  who,  as 
he  thought,  were  often  overlaid  by  artifice  and 
conventionality.  The  formalities  which  pass  by 
the  name  of  education  he  thought  have  little  to 
do  with  real  feeling  and  just  sense,  and  inter- 
course with  the  talking  world  does  little  to  im- 
prove men.  He  therefore  turned  away  from  arti- 
ficial to  natural  man,  and  resolved  to  let  the  world 
know  what  he  had  seen  and  found  in  men  and 
women  whose  outside  was  least  attractive. 

"  Of  these,  said  I,  shall  be  my  song,  of  these 
Will  I  record  the  praises,  making  verse ; 
Deal  boldly  with  substantial  things,  in  truth 
And  sanctity  of  passion,  speak  of  these 
That  justice  may  be  done,  obeisance  paid 
Where  it  is  due." 

Much  more  might  be  said  of  his  views  of  man, 
as  they  ultimately  became,  for  his  insight  into 
the  heart  and  its  workings,  though  confined  to 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      259 

certain  lines,  and  reflective,  not  dramatic,  was 
within  these  lines  true  and  deep. 

But  we  must  now  turn  to  consider,  secondly, 
what  were  his  views  about  Nature,  when  they 
were  fully  matured.  He  now  came  to  hold  with 
conscious  conviction,  what  formerly  he  had  only 
felt,  hardly  knowing  that  he  felt  it,  that  Nature 
had 

A  self -subsistence,  existing  outside  of  man's 
thoughts  and  feelings,  and  wholly  independent 
of  them ; 

A  unity  of  life  and  power  pervading  it  through 
all  its  parts,  and  binding  them  together  into  a  liv- 
ing whole ; 

A  true  life  of  her  own,  which  streamed  through 
and  stimulated  his  life  —  a  spirit  which,  itself  in- 
visible, spoke  through  visible  things  to  his  spirit. 

That  this  life  had  qualities  inherent  in  it:  — 

Calmness,  which  stilled  and  refreshed  man ;   > 

Sublimity,  which  raised  him  to  noble  and  ma- 
jestic thoughts ; 

Tenderness,  which,  while  Stirling  in  the  largest 
and  loftiest  things,  condescends  to  the  lowest,  is 
with  the  humblest  worm  and  weed  as  much  as  in 
the  great  movements  of  the  elements  and  of  the 
stars. 

Above  all,  Nature  he  now  saw  to  be  the  shape 
and  image  of  right  reason,  reason  in  the  highest 
sense,  embodied  and  made  visible  in  order,  in 
stability,  in  conformity  to  eternal  law.  The  per- 
ception  of  these  satisfied  his  intellect,  calmed  and 
soothed  his  heart. 


260  WORDSWORTH 

Thus  the  powers  and  impulses  which  converse 
with  these  qualities,  as  they  exist  in  .ihe  external 
work,  had  quickened  within  his  boyish  mind,  now 
once  more  in  this  reviving  time  asserted  them- 
selves, and  filled  him  with  a  happiness  which,  if 
soberer,  was  sanctioned  by  his  mature  reason 
The  Universe  therefore  was  to  him  no  mere  re 
verberation  of  his  own  voice,  no  mere  reflection 
of  hues*  cast  from  his  own  changeful  moods.  It 
was  not  a  thing  to  practice  the  pathetic  fallacy 
on.  It  was  not  true  that,  as  Coleridge  dreamed, 
"  Ours  is  the  wedding  garment,  ours  the  shroud." 

\,  Not  this  at  all,  but  an  existence  independent  of 
us  and  our  moods,  stable,  equable,  serene.  And 
our  wisdom  is  to  receive  her  native  impulses 
without  imposing  on  her  our  caprices.  Hence  it 
is  that  Nature  is  to  man  a  supporting,  calming, 
cooling,  and  invigorating  power.  So  it  was  that 
at  this  time  he  felt  both  emotion  and  calmness 
come  to  him  from  Nature,  from  the  one  energy 

">!  to  seek  the  truth,  from  the  other  that  happy 
stillness  which  fits  the  mind  to  receive  truth 
when  it  comes  unsought.  With  clearer  convic- 
tion than  ever,  he  now  saw  in  Nature  a  power, 
which  is  the  shape  and  image  of  right  reason  — 
reason,  in  its  highest  sense,  embodied  and  made 
visible.  The  order,  the  stability,  "  the  calm  obe- 
dience to  eternal  law," — these,  as  I  have  just 
said,  which  are  the  image  of  right  reason,  satisfied 
his  intellect,  calmed  and  soothed  his  feelings. 
From  Nature's  calmness,  and  hvm  her  slow  and 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      261 

steadily-working  processes,  he  received  an  admo- 
nition to  cease  from  hoping  to  see  man  regener- 
ated by  sudden  and  violent  convulsions,  and  yet 
to  esteem  and  reverence  what  is  permanent  in 
human  affection,  and  in  man's  moral  being,  and 
to  build  his  hope  on  the  gradual  expansion  and 
purification  of  these.  All  these  perceptions  about 
Nature  had  been  more  or  less  present  to  him  from 
boyhood,  only  now  what  were  before  but  vague 
emotions  came  out  as  settled  convictions. 

But  there  was  a  further  step,  which  he  now 
made.  He  discovered  that  in  order  to  attain  the 
highest  and  truest  vision  of  Nature,  the  soul  of 
man  must  not  be  altogether  passive,  but  must)*, 
act  along  with  and  in  unison  with  Nature,  must 
send  from  itself  abroad  an  emanation,  which, 
meeting  with  natural  objects,  produces  something 
better  than  either  the  soul  itself  or  Nature  by 
herself  could  generate.  This  creation  is,  as  has 
been  observed,  "  partly  given  by  the  object, 
partly  by  the  poet's  mind,"  is  neither  wholly 
mind,  nor  wholly  object,  but  something,  call  it 
aspect,  effluence,  emanation,  which  partakes  of 
both.  It  is  the  meeting  or  marriage  of  the  life 
that  is  in  the  soul  with  the  life  that  is  in  the 
Universe,  which  two  are  akin  to  each  other,  that 
produces  the  truest  vision  and  the  highest  poetry. 
This  view  Wordsworth  illustrates  by  the  marvel- 
ous effect  produced  on  a  landscape  by  a  change 
in  the  atmosphere,  a  clearing  of  the  clouds,  a  sud- 
den flood  of  moonlight  let  down  into  the  dark- 


262  WORDSWORTH 

ness  of  mountain  abysses,  such  as  that  he  saw 
at  midnight  while  ascending  Snowdon.  A  like 
power  he  thinks  the  mind  can  exercise  on  out- 
ward things  —  what  he  calls 

"  An  ennobling  interchange 
Of  action  from  without  and  from  within. 
The  excellence,  pure  function,  and  best  power, 
Both  of  the  object  seen  and  eye  that  sees." 

When  his  mind  thus  put  forth  its  higher  power 
on  the  actual  familiar  world,  on  life's  every-day 
appearances,  he  seemed  to  gain  clear  sight  of  a 
new  world,  not  hitherto  reflected  in  books,  but 
worthy  to  be  so  reflected,  and  made  visible  to 
other  eyes.  This  he  set  himself  to  accomplish, 
and  the  result  still  lives  in  many  a  pure  and 
deathless  creation.  That  combined  action  of  the 
object  seen  and  of  the  eye  that  saw,  above  spoken 
of,  is  especially  embodied  in  such  poems  as  "  The 
Yew-Trees  of  Borrowdale,"  "  Stepping  West- 
ward," "The  Leech-Gatherer,"  and  "To  the 
Cuckoo."  In  all  these,  and  many  more,  the  poet, 
letting  his  own  spirit  pass  forth  into  the  scene 
before  him,  and  become  identified  with  it,  has 
caught  the  inner  spirit  of  the  place  and  of  the 
hour,  brought  it  out,  and  interpreted  it  as  no  mere 
outward  description  could  have  done.  A  few 
strokes,  giving  one  or  two  of  the  most  charac- 
teristic features,  as  seen  by  a  keenly-observant 
i  eye,  and  then  he  glides  into  that  which  no  eye 
can  see,  but  only  the  living  power  of  a  deep  and 
sympathetic  imagination  And  though  few  other 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      263 

imaginations  could  have  penetrated  so  deeply  into 
the  secret  of  Nature,  and  given  articulate  voice 
to  her  silences,  yet  every  true  imagination  feels  -' 
at  once  that  he  had  gone  to  the  quick,  and  truly 
rendered  the  invisible  but  not  unfelt  presence 
that  dwells  there.  It  is  in  this  way  that  he  has 
gathered  up  into  himself  the  sleep  that  from  old- 
est time  has  brooded  over  those  Westmoreland 
mountains,  and  uttered  it  in  his  own  perfect  and 
melodious  language.  This  has  been  done  by  him 
for  that  region  once  for  all,  and  no  other  poet 
need  attempt  to  repeat  it,  any  more  than  a 
sculptor  need  essay  another  Apollo  Belvedere, 
or  a  painter  a  new  Transfiguration. 

On  many  of  the  poems  descriptive  of  Nature 
that  followed  his  recovery  from  despondency,  — 
that  is,  those  composed  between  the  years  1796 
and  1808,  —  there  rests  an  ethereal  gleam,  some- 
thing of 

"  The  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land," 
which  gives  to  these  a  peculiar  charm,  but  which 
is  less  present  in  his  later  productions.  This 
idealizing  light  was  drawn  either  from  remem- 
brances of  that  dream-like  vividness  and  splendor 
above  noticed,  which  in  childhood  he  saw  resting 
on  all  things,  or  from  occasional  returns  of  the  ' 
same  vivid  emotion  and  quick  flashings  from 
within,  which  his  restored  happiness  in  Nature 
for  a  time  brought  back.  This  peculiar  light  cul- 
minates in  the  "  Ode  on  Immortality,"  though 
there  it  is  rather  a  remembrance  of  something 


264  WORDSWORTH 

gone  than  a  present  possession.  Perhaps  the  last 
powerful  recurrence  of  this  visionary  gleam  which 
he  felt  is  that  recorded  in  the  lines  composed 
upon  "  An  Evening  of  Extraordinary  Beauty  and 
Splendor,"  seen  from  the  little  mount  in  front  of 
his  Rydal  home  in  the  year  1818.1 

But  these  high  instincts,  and  all  the  impulses 
akin  to  them,  what  are  they,  what  is  their  worth 
and  meaning,  what  are  we  to  think  about  them  ? 
Are  they  merely  erratic  flashes,  garnishing  for  a 
moment  our  sky  in  early  years,  soon  to  be  lost  for- 
ever in  the  gray  light  of  common  day  ?  This  is 
the  way  in  which  most  poets  have  regarded  them, 
and  so  they  have  sung  many  a  sad  depressing 
strain  over  the  vanished  illusions  of  youth.  But 
this  was  not  the  way  with  Wordsworth.  Mr. 
Leslie  Stephens,  in  a  recent  essay  of  great  value, 
has  admirably  pointed  out  how  his  whole  phi- 
losophy is  based  on  u  the  identity  between  the 
instincts  of  our  childhood  and  our  enlightened 
reason,"  and  is  busied  with  expounding  the  proc- 

1  How  greatly  to  be  desired  is  an  edition  of  Wordsworth's 
entire  works,  in  which  the  poems  should  be  printed  in  the  exact 
chronological  order  of  their  composition,  along  with  those  notes 
on  them  which  the  poet  dictated  late  in  life.  Such  an  arrange- 
ment of  them  is  absolutely  essential  to  a  right  understanding  of 
their  meaning,  and  those  who  desire  to  attain,  such  an  under- 
standing are  obliged  to  make  the  chronological  arrangement  for 
themselves,  at  great  trouble,  and  at  best  very  imperfectly.  The 
time  when  such  an  edition  can  be  made,  with  the  fullest  meana 
for  accuracy,  is  fast  passing,  if  it  is  not  already  past.  Is  there 
no  hope  that  those  in  whose  hands  the  thing  lies  will  still  rende ' 
this  great  and  much-needed  service  to  the  great  poet's  memory  ? 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      265 

ess  by  which  "  our  early  intuitions  may  be  trans- 
formed into  settled  principles  of  feeling  and 
action."  Those  vague  instincts,  Wordsworth  be- 
lieved, come  to  man  from  a  divine  source,  and  are 
given  to  him  not  merely  for  pleasure's  sake,  but 
that  he  may  condense  them  into  permanent  prin-  X^ 
ciples  by  thought,  by  the  faithful  exercise  of  the 
affections,  by  contemplation  of  Nature,  and  by 
high  resolve.  The  outer  world  was  best  and 
most  truly  seen  when  viewed,  not  as  a  solitary 
existence  apart  from  man,  but  as  the  background  * 
of  human  life,  and  looked  at  through  the  hu- 
man emotions  of  awe,  reverence,  and  love.  Thus, 
though  those  early  ideal  lights  might  disappear, 
something  else,  as  precious*  and  more  permanent, 
would  be  wrought  into  character  as  the  vague 
emotions  became  transmuted  into  what  he  calls 
"  intellectual  love,"  "  feeling  intellect,"  "  hope- 
ful reason,"  all  of  which  are  but  different 
names  for  that  state  of  consciousness  which  he 
held  to  be  the  organ  or  eye  that  sees  all  highest 
truth. 

"  This  spiritual  love  acts  not  nor  exists 
"Without  imagination,  which,  in  truth, 
Is  but  another  name  for  absolute  power 
And  clearest  insight,  amplitude  of  mind, 
And  reason  in  her  most  exalted  mood." 

It  may  be  said,  perhaps,  This  philosophy  is  all 
weJ  enough  for  those  who  have  in  childhood 
known  such  ideal  experiences  in  the  presence  ot 
Nature.  But  these  are  the  few  ;  most  men  know 


266  WORDSWORTH 

nothing  of  them.  Be  it  so.  But  to  these,  too, 
this  philosophy  has  a  word  to  speak.  If  the  many 
have  been  insensible  to  Nature,  most  surely  they 
have  known  the  first  home  affections,  to  father 
and  mother,  to  brother  and  sister.  In  early  youth 
they  have  felt  the  warm  glow  of  friendship,  and 
later  in  life  the  first  domestic  affections  may  have 
revived  more  deeply  when  manhood  has  ma(le  for 
itself  a  second  home.  Of  these  emotions  time 
must  needs  make  many  of  them  past  experiences. 
Are  they  then  to  be  no  more  than  fond  memories 
without  influence  on  our  present  selves  ?  Words- 
worth teaches,  and  all  wise  men  agree  with  him, 
that  if  we  allow  these  to  pass  from  us,  as  sun- 
beams from  a  hill-side,  the  character  is  lowered 
and  worsened ;  if  they  are  retained  in  thought 
and  melted  into  our  being,  they  become  the  most 
fruitful  sources  of  ennobled  character.  The  firm 
purpose  not  to 

"  Break  faith  with  those  whom  he  has  laid 
In  earth's  dark  chambers, " 

—  to  how  many  a  man  has  this  become  the  chief 
incentive  to  perseverance  in  high  endeavor  ! 

This  is  a  philosophy  which  will  wear.  It  suits 
not  only  the  visionary  in  his  solitude,  but  is  fitted 
as  well  for  the  counting-house  and  the  market- 
| lace. 

Again,  it  may  be  said,  This  way  of  looking  at 
Nature  and  life  may  suit  a  man  in  the-heyday  of 
life,  when  his  nerves  are  strong,  his  hopes  high, 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      267 

and  all  things  wear  their  summer  mood.    In  such 
a  time  he  may  well  sing 

"  Naught  shall  prevail  against  us  or  disturb 
Our  cheerful  faith  that  all  which  we  behold 
Is  fall  of  blessings." 

No  doubt,  through  "  The  Prelude,"  and  through 
all  Wordsworth's  poetry  contemporary  with  it, 
that  is,  all  his  poetry  composed  before  the  age  of 
thirty-five,  there  runs  a  vein  of  Optimism.  But 
a  man's  views  of  life  are  not  complete  at  that 
age.  Though  he  never  expressly  recanted  any 
of  the  views  expressed  in  "  The  Prelude,"  yet  he 
added  to  them  new  elements  when  time  and  grief 
showed  him  other  sides  of  life.  Hitherto,  human 
sorrow  had  been  to  him  but  a  "  still  sad  music  " 
far  away.  But  when,  in  1805,  Nature,  with  her 
night  and  tempest,  drove  his  favorite  brother's 
ship  on  the  Shambles  of  Portland  Head,  and 
wrecked  the  life  he  greatly  loved,  then  he  learned 
that  she  was  not  always  serene,  but  could  be  stern 
and  cruel.  Then  sorrow  came  home  to  him,  and 
entered  into  his  inmost  soul.  In  that  bereave- 
ment we  find  him  writing  —  "  Why  have  we  sym- 
pathies that  make  the  best  of  us  afraid  of  inflict- 
ing pain  and  sorrow,  which  yet  we  see  dealt 
about  so  lavishly  by  the  Supreme  Governor? 
Why  should  our  notions  of  right  towards  each 
other,  and  to  all  sentient  beings  within  our  influ- 
ence, differ  so  widely  from  what  appears  to  be 
his  notion  and  rule,  if  everything  were  to  end 
here  ?  Would  it  not  be  blasphemous  to  say  that 


268  WORDSWORTH 

....  we  have  more  of  love  in  our  nature  than 
He  has  ?  The  thought  is  monstrous ;  and  yet 
how  to  get  rid  of  it,  except  upon  the  supposition 
of  another  and  a  better  world,  I  do  not  see."  This 
is  not  the  language  of  a  pantheist,  as  he  has  been 
often  called,  nor  of  an  optimist,  one  blind  to  the 
dark  side  of  the  world,  as  his  poetry  would  some- 
'times  make  us  fancy  him.  From  that  time  on,  the 
sights  and  sounds  of  Nature  took  to  Wordsworth 
a  soberer  hue,  a  more  solemn  tone.  The  change 
of  mood  is  grandly  expressed  in  the  "  Elegiac 
Stanzas  on  a  Picture  of  Peele  Castle,"  where  he 
says  that  he  now  could  look  no  more  on 
"  A  smiling  sea,  and  be  what  I  have  been." 

Yet  he  gives  way  to  no  weak  or  selfish  lamenta- 
tion, but  sets  himself  to  draw  from  the  sorrow 
fortitude  for  himself,  sympathy  and  tenderness 
for  others :  — 

"  Then  welcome  fortitude,  and  patient  cheer, 

And  frequent  sights  of  what  is  to  be  borne  ; 

Such  sights,  or  worse,  as  are  before  me  here ;  — 

Not  without  hope  we  suffer  and  we  mourn." 

That  is  manly  and  health-giving  sorrow.  It  was 
his  happiness,  more  than  of  most  men,  to  use  all 
that  came  to  him  for  the  end  it  was  meant  for. 
Early  ideal  influences  from  Nature,  the  first  home 
affections,  sorrows  of  mature  manhood  —  none  of 
them  were  lost.  All  melted  into  him,  and  did 
their  part  in  educating  his  heart  to  a  more  feel- 
ing and  tender  wisdom.  But  they  could  not  have 
done  this,  they  could  not  have  so  deepened  and 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      269 

purified  him,  had  they  not  been  received  into  a 
spirit  based  in  firm  faith  on  God,  from  whom  all 
these  things  came,  whose  purpose  for  himself  and 
others  they  subserved.  This  discipline  of  sorrow 
was  increased  when,  a  few  years  after  the  ioss  of 
his  brother,  he  laid  in  Grasmere  church-yard  two 
infant  children.  Those  trials  of  his  home  affec- 
tions sank  deep  into  him,  —  more  and  more  hu- 
manized his  spirit,  and  made  him  feel  more  dis- 
tinctly the  power  of  those  Christian  faiths  which, 
though  never  denied  by  him,  were  present  in  his 
early  poems  rather  as  a  latent  atmosphere  of  sen- 
timent than  as  expressed  beliefs.  /  It  cannot  be 
denied  that  in  his  pure,  but  perhaps  too  confident 
youth,  the  Naturalistic  spirit,  so  to  call  it,  i 
stronger  in  his  poetry  than  the  Christian.  He 
expected  more  from  the  teaching  of  Nature,  com- 
bined with  the  moral  intuitions  of  his  soul,  than  V 
these  in  themselves,  and  unaided,  can  give.  He 
did  not  enough  see  that  man  needs  other  supports 
than  these  for  the  trials  he  has  to  endure.  This 
is  not  a  matter  of  positive  assertion  or  of  positive 
denial, — -rather  of  comparative  emphasis  and 
proportion.  We  may  say  that  the  Christian  view 
of  life  and  Nature  does  not  at  first  receive  the  - 
prominence  which  is  its  due.  But  under  the 
pressure  of  sorrow,  and  the  sense  of  his  own 
weakness,  he  more  and  more  turned  t<c  :he  Chris- 
tian consolations.  This  change  was  a  very  grad- 
ual one,  and  he  has  left  no  direct  record  of  it. 
Only  it  is  perceptible  here  and  there  in  his  later 


270  WORDSWORTH 

poems,  and,  what  is  most  to  our  purpose,  it  colors 
the  eye  with  which  he  looked  on  Nature.  This 
cannot,  perhaps,  better  be  illustrated  than  by 
comparing  two  poems  composed  in  the  same  re- 
gion at  an  interval  of  thirty  years.  In  1803,  in 
his  buoyant  youth,  during  an  evening  walk  by 
the  shores  of  Loch  Katrine,  with  his  face  toward 
a  glowing  sunset,  he  composed  the  exquisite  lines 
"Stepping  Westward,"  in  which  the  scene  around 
him  and  a  chance  word  addressed  to  him  sug- 
gested 

"  The  thought 

Of  traveling  through  the  world  that  lay 
Before  me  in  my  endless  way." 

In  the  autumn  of  1831,  when  he  was  in  his 
sixty-second  year,  he  again  passed  through  the 
Trossachs,  and  this  was  the  sentiment  that  then 
arose  within  him.  It  may,  as  he  himself  sug- 
gests, have  been  colored  by  the  remembrance  of 
his  recent  parting  with  Sir  Walter  Scott  and  the 
thought  of  his  decay,  but  it  is  altogether  in  keep* 
ing  with  his  own  habitual  mood  at  that  time  •  — 

"  There 's  not  a  nook  within  this  solemn  Pass, 
But  were  an  apt  confessional  for  one 
Taught  hy  his  summer  spent,  his  autumn  gone, 
That  life  is  but  a  tale  of  morning  grass 
Withered  at  eve.    From  scenes  of  art  which  chase 
That  thought  away,  turn,  and  with  watchful  eyes 
Feed  it,  'mid  Nature's  old  felicities, 
Rocks,  rivers,  and  smooth  lakes  more  clear  than  glass 
Untouched,  unbreathed  upon.     Thrice  happy  quest. 
If  from  a  golden  perch  of  aspen  spray 
(October's  workmanship  to  rival  May), 
The  pensive  warbler  of  the  ruddy  breast, 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      271 

That  moral  sweeten  by  a  heaven-taught  lay, 
Lulling  the  year,  with  all  its  cares,  to  rest." 

There  is  another  poem  of  the  same  date,  1831, 
which,  though  it  is  seldom  quoted,  shall  be  given 
here  in  full,  since  It  well  illustrates  Wordsworth's 
later  phase  of  feeling  about  natural  objects.  It  is 
entitled  "  The  Primrose  of  the  Rock,"  and  refers 
to  a  rock  which  stands  on  the  right  hand,  a  little 
way  up  the  middle  road  leading  from  Rydal  to 
Grasmere :  — 

"A  Bock  there  is  whose  homely  front 

The  passing  traveler  slights ; 
Yet  there  the  glow-worms  hang  their  lamps, 

Like  stars,  at  various  heights  ; 
And  one  coy  Primrose  to  that  Rock 

The  vernal  breeze  invites. 

"  What  hideous  warfare  hath  been  waged, 

What  kingdoms  overthrown, 
Since  first  I  spied  that  Primrose-tuft, 

And  marked  it  for  my  own  ; 
A  lasting  link  in  Nature's  chain 

From  highest  heaven  let  down  ! 

"  The  flowers,  still  faithful  to  the  stern^ 

Their  fellowship  renew ; 
These  stems  are  faithful  to  the  root 

That  worketh  out  of  view ; 
And  to  the  rock  the  root  adheres 

In  every  fibre  true. 

*  Close  clings  to  earth  the  living  rock 

Though  threatening  still  to  fall ; 
The  earth  is  constant  to  her  sphere ; 

And  God  upholds  them  all : 
So  blooms  this  lonely  Plant,  nor  fears 

Her  annual  funeral 


272  WORDSWORTH 

u  Here  closed  the  meditative  strain, 

But  air  breathed  soft  that  day, 
The  hoary  mountain-heights  were  cheered. 

The  sunny  vale  looked  gay, 
And  to  the  Primrose  of  the  Rock 

I  gave  this  after-lay. 

<c  I  sang  —  Let  myriads  of  bright  flowers, 

Like  thee,  in  field  and  grove 
Revive  unenvied ;  mightier  far, 
Than  tremblings  that  reprove 
Our  vernal  tendencies  to  hope 
Is  God's  redeeming  love  ; 

"  That  love  which  changed  —  for  wan  disease, 

For  sorrow  that  had  bent 
O'er  hopeless  dust  —  for  withered  age  — 

Their  moral  element, 
And  turned  the  thistles  of  a  curse 

To  types  beneficent. 

u  Sin-blighted  though  we  are,  we  too, 

The  reasoning  Sons  of  Men, 
From  our  oblivious  winter  called 

Shall  rise,  and  breathe  again, 
And  in  eternal  summer  lose 
Our  threescore  years  and  ten. 

*  To  humbleness  of  hearts  descends 

This  prescience  from  on  high 
The  faith  that  elevates  the  just, 

Before  and  when  we  die, 
And  makes  each  soul  a  separate  heaven, 
A  court  for  Deity." 

Is  not  this  more  in  keeping  with  the  whole  of 
Nature,  more  true  to  human  life  in  all  its  aspects, 
than  poetry  which  dwells  merely  on  the  bright 
and  cheerful  side  of  tilings?  If  Nature  has  its 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      273 

vernal  freshness,  and  its  "  high  midsummer 
pomps,"  has  it  not  as  well  autumnal  decay, 
bleakness  of  winter,  and  dreary  visitations  of 
blighting  east  wind  ?  What  are  we  to  make  of 
these  ?  Are  not  suffering  and  death  forever 
going  on  throughout  animated  creation  ?  What 
meaning  are  we  to  attach  to  this  ?  As  for  man, 
if  he  has  his  day  of  youth  and  strength  and  suc- 
cess, what  are  we  to  say  of  failure,  disappoint- 
ment, bereavement,  and  life's  swift  decay  ?  This 
last,  the  dark  and  forlorn  side  of  things,  is  as 
real  as  the  bright  side.  How  are  we  to  interpret 
it  ?  Surely,  without  attempting  any  theory  which 
will  explain  it,  nothing  is  more  in  keeping  with 
these  manifold  and  seemingly  conflicting  aspects 
of  life  than  the  faith  that  He  who  made  and  up- 
holds the  Universe  does  not  keep  coldly  aloof, 
gazing  from  a  distance  on  the  sufferings  of  his 
creatures,  but  has  himself  entered  into  the  con- 
flict, has  himself  become  the  great  Sufferer,  the 
great  Bearer  of  all  wrong,  and  is  working  out  for 
his  creatures  some  better  issue  through  a  re- 
demptive sorrow  which  is  Divine.  Such  a  faith, 
though  it  does  not  explain  the  ills  of  life,  gives 
them  another  meaning,  and  helps  men  to  bear 
them  as  no  other  can.  This  view  of  suffering, 
latent  in  much  of  Wordsworth's  poetry,  if  not 
fully  uttered,  at  last  found  full  expression  in 
these,  which  are  among  his  latest  lines. 

No  doubt  this,  and  the  few  other  meditative 
poems,  composed  in  the  same  strain  at  that  later 

18 


274  WORDSWORTH 

day,  have  not  the  magic  charm,  the  ethereal 
beauty,  of  those  songs  sung  in  buoyant  youth, 
when  before  the  transfiguring  power  of  his  imagi- 
nation the  earth  appeared  to  be 

"An  unsubstantial  faery  place." 

That  passed  with  youth,  and  could  not  return ; 
but  another  sedater,  more  moralizing,  yet  sweetly 
gracious  mood  came  on,  —  a  mood  which  is  in 
keeping  with  that  earlier,  its  natural  product  rep- 
resentative in  one,  whose  days  and  whose  moods 
were  as  he  himself  wished  them  to  be,  "  linked 
each  to  each  by  natural  piety."  As  there  is  in 
character  a  grace  that  becomes  every  age,  so  there 
is  a  poetry.  And  Wordsworth's  later  expressions 
about  Nature  and  life  are,  I  venture  to  think,  as 
becoming  in  an  old  man,  matured  by  much  expe- 
rience and  by  sorrow,  as  his  earlier  more  ideal 
poems  became  a  young  man  just  restored  from  a 
great  mental  crisis,  but  still  with  youth  on  his 
side.  If  the  poems  of  the  maturer  age  lost  some- 
thing that  belonged  to  the  earlier  ones,  they  also 
gained  new  elements,  —  they  contain  words  which 
are  a  support  amid  the  stress  of  life,  and  a  bene 
diction  for  its  decline. 

There  were  many  who  knew  Wordsworth's  po- 
etry well  while  he  was  still  alive,  who  felt  its 
power,  and  the  new  light  which  it  threw  on  the 
material  world.  But  though  they  half-guessed 
they  did  not  fully  know  the  secret  of  it.  They 
got  glimpses  of  part,  but  could  not  grasp  the 
whole  of  the  philosophy  on  which  it  was  based 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      275 

But  when,  after  his  death,  "  The  Prelude "  was 
published,  they  were  let  into  the  secret,  they  saw 
fche  hidden  foundations  on  which  it  rests,  as  they 
had  never  seen  them  before.  The  smaller  poems 
were  more  beautiful,  more  delightful,  but  "  The 
^Prelude"  revealed  the  secret  of  their  beauty. 
It  showed  that  all  Wordsworth's  impassioned 
feeling  towards  Nature  was  no  mere  fantastic 
dream,  but  based  on  sanity,  on  a  most  assured 
and  reasonable  philosophy.  It  was  as  though 
one  who  had  been  long  gazing  on  some  building 
grand  and  fair,  admiring  the  vast  sweep  of  its 
walls,  and  the  strength  of  its  battlements,  without 
understanding  their  principle  of  coherence,  were 
at  length  to  be  admitted  inside  by  the  master 
builder,  and  given  a  view  of  the  whole  plan  from 
within,  the  principles  of  the  architecture,  and 
the  hidden  substructures  on  which  it  was  built. 
This  is  what  "  The  Prelude  "  does  for  the  rest  of 
Wordsworth's  poetry. 

For  all  his  later  phases  of  thought,  all  that 
followed  the  republicanism  of  "The  Prelude," 
Wordsworth,  I  know,  has  been  well  abused. 
Shelley  bemoaned  him,  Mr.  Browning  has  flouted 
him,  and  following  these  all  the  smaller  fry  of 
Liberalism  have  snarled  at  his  heels.  But  all  his 
changes  of  thought  are  self-consistent,  and  if 
fairly  judged,  the  good  faith  and  wisdom  of  them 
all  can  well  be  justified.  For  a  few  years  during 
the  Revolution  he  had  hoped  for  a  sudden  regen- 
eration from  that  great  catastrophe.  He  found 


276  WORDSWORTH. 

himself  deceived,  and  gradually  unlearnt  the  fal- 
lacies whence  that  deception  had  sprung.  lie 
ceased  to  look  for  the  improvement  of  mankind 
from  violent  convulsions.  Neither  did  he  expect 
much  from  gradual  political  change,  nor  from 
those  formalities  which  we  nickname  education, 
not  from  a  revised  code  and  payment  by  results, 
not  from  these  nor  from  any  outward  machinery. 
But  he  hoped 'much  from  whatever  helps  forward 
the  growth,  the  expanding,  and  the  deepening,  in 
all  the  grades  of  men,  of  the  "  feeling  soul,"  by 
which  they  may  become  more  sensitive  to  the 
face  of  Nature,  more  sensitive  towards  their  fel- 
low-men and  the  lower  creatures,  and  more  open 
to  influences  which  are  directly  divine.  In  these 
things  he  believed,  for  these  he  wrought  consist- 
ently, till  his  task  was  done. 

I  have  dwelt  thus  fully  on  the  growth  of 
Wordsworth's  character,  the  moral  discipline 
through  which  he  passed,  and  the  ultimate  ma- 
turity of  soul  to  which  he  attained,  in  order  that 
we  may  understand  his  doctrine  regarding  Nat- 
ure. He  held  that  it  was  only  through  the  soul 

\  that  the  outer  world  is  rightly  apprehended  — 
only  when  it  is  contemplated  through  the  human 
emotions  of  admiration,  awe,  and  love.  This  he 
held  all  his  life  through.  But  yet  in  his  way  of 
dealing  with  Nature,  taken  as  a  whole,  we  shall 
not  be  wrong  if  we  note  two  different,  though 
not  conflicting,  phases.  In  his  earlier  poetic  pe- 

^  rnd  he  was  mainly  absorbed  in  the  unity  and 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      277 

large  livingness  of  Nature  —  in  feeling  and  inter- 
preting the  life  that  is  in  each  individual  thing, 
as  well  as  in  the  whole,  in  substituting  for  a  mere 
machine,  —  a  universe  of  death,  —  one  which 

"  Moves  with  light,  and  light  informed, 
Actual,  divine,  and  true." 

Jn  doing  this  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  his 
poetry  is  the  most  powerful  protest  which  Eng- 
lish literature  contains  against  the  views  of  the 
world  engendered  by  a  mechanical  deism — the  % 
best  witness  to  the  spiritual  element  that  exists 
both  in  Nature  and  in  man.  Nor  less  is  it  our 
surest  antidote  to  the-  exclusively  analytic  and 
microscopic  view  of  Nature,  so  tyrannous  over  A 
present  thought,  the  end  of  which  is  universal 
disintegration.  This  was  the  work  he  did  when 
he  worked  more  in  his  earlier,  what  has  been 
called,  his  naturalistic  vein. 

In  his  later  period  the  moral  tendency  became 
predominant,  not  that  it  had  ever  been  absent 
from  his  thought.  Even  at  a  comparatively  early 
time  he  had  been  wont  to  take  the  sights  and 
sounds  of  the  sensible  world  as  symbols  and  cor- 
respondences of  the  invisible.  In  1806,  hearing 
the  cuckoo's  voice  echo  from  Nab-scar,  as  he 
walked  on  the  opposite  side  of  Rydal  Mere,  he 
exdaimed :  — 

:<  Have  not  we  too  ?  yes,  we  have 

Answers  and  we  know  not  whence 
Echoes  from  beyond  the  grave, 
Recognized  intelligence ! 


278  WORDSWORTH 

"  Often  as  thy  inward  ear 

Catches  such  rebounds,  be^  %re  — 
Listen,  ponder,  hold  them  dear ; 
For  of  God —  of  God  they  are." 

Again,  in  that  Evening  ode  composed  in  1818, 
to  which  reference  has  been  already  made,  as  he 
gazes  on 

"  The  silent  spectacle  —  the  gleam  — 
The  shadow  —  and  the  peace  supreme," 

he  exclaims  — 

"  Come  forth,  ye  drooping  old  men,  look  abroad, 
And  see  to  what  fair  countries  ye  are  bound  !  " 

In  his  latest  phase,  as  seen  in  the  two  poems  of 
1831,  quoted  above,  the  moral  has  so  overpowered 
the  naturalistic  mood  that  this  spiritualizing  of 
all  Nature  into  symbols  of  things  unseen  is  rather 
obviously  obtruded  than  delicately  hinted.  How- 
ever this  may  be,  to  do  this,  to  treat  Nature  in 
this  way,  so  to  interpret  it  that  it  shall  touch  the 
moral  heart  of  the  most  thoughtful  and  apprehen- 
sive men  —  this  is  one  of  the  two  highest  func- 
tions of  inspired  Poetry.  And  in  the  exercise 
of  this  function,  too,  Wordsworth  has  taught  us 
much. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  continue  this  inves- 
tigation, and  to  trace  the  different  phases  of  the 
great  movement  towards  Nature,  as  it  manifests 
itself  in  the  poets  who  were  Wordsworth's  con- 
temporaries, Byron,  Shelley,  Keats,  Scott,  and 
Keble;  and  in  the  poets  of  the  present  genera- 


AS  AN  INTERPRETER  OF  NATURE.      279 

tion,  and  in  other  writers  still  living,  who  in  prose 
wcrks  have  treated  of  aesthetics.  But  to  do  so 
would  require  at  least  another  volume.  With 
Wordsworth,  however,  as  the  great  leader  of  that 
movement,  one  may,  with  propriety,  pause  for 
the  present.  For  however  various  and  interest* 
ing  have  been  the  aspects  of  Nature  that  have 
been  presented  by  his  contemporaries,  or  by  more 
recent  poets,  none  of  them  has  rendered  those 
aspects  he  has  essayed  more  truly,  broadly,  and 
penetratingly.  And  Wordsworth  alone,  adding 
the  philosopher  to  the  poet,  has  speculated  widely 
and  deeply  on  the  relation  in  which  Nature  stands 
to  the  soul  of  man,  and  on  the  truths  suggested 
by  this  relation.  In  that  relation,  and  along  the* 
lines  of  thought  that  radiate  from  it,  is  to  be 
found  the  true  interpretation  of  Nature  —  that 
interpretation  which  man  still  craves,  after  Sci- 
ence has  said  its  last  word.  This  interpretation, 
however,  is  a  truth  which  can  only  be  appre- 
hended by  the  moral  imagination,  that  is,  the  im- 
agination filled  with  moral  light,  and  which  will 
commend  itself  only  to  the  most  thoughtful  men 
in  their  most  feeling  moods.  It  is  not  likely  ever 
to  be  vindicated  by  logical  processes,  or  tabulated 
in  scientific  registers.  Not  the  less  for  that  is  it 
a  vital  truth,  attesting  itself,  as  all  vital  truths 
do,  by  the  harmony  it  brings  into  all  our  thoughts 
—  by  the  response  it  finds  in  the  inner  man. 


TSt  T. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below,  or 

on  the  date  to  which  renewed. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


FEE  2  5  '64-12  M 


REC'D  LD 


JUL  17*64  -9  AM 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


